&w 


Marie  Antoinette 

By 

H.    BELLOC 


ILLUSTRATED 


New  York 

Doubleday,  Page  &  Company 
1909 


ALL  BIGHTS  KBSBBVED,   INCLUDING  THAT  OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN  LANQtTAGBS,  INCLUDING  THB  SCANDINAVIAK 

COPTKIGHT,  1909,   BY  DOUBLBDAT,  PAGB  &  COMPANY 
PUBLISHED,  OCTOBBB,   1909 


TO 
GEORGE    WYNDHAM 


/I  o  n 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

The  eighteenth  century,  which  had  lost  the  appetite 
for  tragedy  and  almost  the  comprehension  of  it,  was  granted, 
before  it  closed,  the  most  perfect  subject  of  tragedy  which 
history  affords. 

The  Queen  of  France  whose  end  is  but  an  episode  in  the 
story  of  the  Revolution  stands  apart  in  this :  that  while  all 
around  her  were  achieved  the  principal  miracles  of  the  human 
will,  she  alone  suffered,  by  an  unique  exception,  a  fixed 
destiny  against  which  the  will  seemed  powerless.  In  person 
she  was  not  considerable,  in  temperament  not  distinguished; 
but  her  fate  was  enormous. 

It  is  profitable,  therefore,  to  abandon  for  a  moment  the 
contemplation  of  those  great  men  who  re-created  in  Europe 
the  well-ordered  State,  and  to  admire  the  exact  convergence 
of  such  accidents  as  drew  around  Marie  Antoinette  an 
increasing  pressure  of  doom.  These  accidents  united  at 
last:  they  drove  her  with  a  precision  that  was  more  than 
human,  right  to  her  predestined  end. 

In  all  the  extensive  record  of  her  actions  there  is  nothing 
beyond  the  ordinary  kind.  She  was  petulant  or  gay, 
impulsive  or  collected,  according  to  the  mood  of  the  moment: 
acting  in  everything  as  a  woman  of  her  temper — red-headed, 
intelligent  and  arduous  —  will  always  do :  she  was  moved 
by  changing  circumstance  to  this  or  that  as  many  millions 
of  her  sort  had  been  moved  before  her.  But  her  chance 
friendships  failed  not  in  mere  disappointments  but  in  ruin; 
her  lapses  of  judgment  betrayed  her  not  to  stumbling  but 


vi  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

to  an  abyss;  her  small,  neglected  actions  matured  unseen 
and  reappeared  prodigious  in  the  catastrophe  of  her  life  as 
torturers  to  drag  her  to  the  scaffold.  Behind  such  causes 
of  misfortune  as  can  at  least  be  traced  in  some  appalling 
order,  there  appear,  as  we  read  her  history,  causes  more 
dreadful  because  they  are  mysterious  and  unreasoned:  ill- 
omened  dates,  fortunes  quite  unaccountable,  and  con- 
tinually a  dark  coincidence,  reawaken  in  us  that  native  dread 
of  Destiny  which  the  Faith,  after  centuries  of  power,  has 
hardly  conjured. 

The  business,  then,  of  this  book  is  not  to  recount  from 
yet  another  aspect  that  decisive  battle  whereby  political 
justice  was  recovered  for  us  all,  nor  to  print  once  more  in 
accurate  sequence  the  life  of  a  queen  whose  actions  have 
been  preserved  in  the  minutest  detail,  but  to  show  a  Lady 
whose  hands  —  for  all  the  freedom  of  their  gesture  —  were 
moved  by  influences  other  than  her  own,  and  whose  feet, 
though  their  steps  seemed  wayward  and  self-determined, 
were  ordered  for  her  in  one  path  that  led  inexorably  to  its 
certain  goal. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTBR  PA0« 

I.  The  Diplomatic  Revolution        .....         3 

II.     Birth  and  Childhood 24 

III.  The  Espousals .43 

IV.  The  Du  Barry  .         .         .         .         .         .         .61 

V.     The  Dauphine  • 71 

VI.     The  Three  Years 98 

VII.     The  Children 156 

VIII.     Figaro 175 

IX.     The  Diamond  Necklace     .          .         .         .         .         .207 

X.     The  Notables 229 

yXI.     The  Bastille 259 

XII.     October   . 287 

XIII.     Mirabeau 320 

XIV.     Varennes 351 

XV.     The  War 391 

XVI.     The  Fall  of  the  Palace       .         .         .         .         .         .411 

XVII.    The  Temple .         .433 

XVIII.     The  Hostage 464 

XIX.     The  Hunger  of  Maubeuge           .         .         .         .         .  487 

XX.     Wattignies 502 

APPENDICES 

APPENDIX  A.    The  Operation  on  Louis  the  Sixteenth  of  France  539 

APPENDIX  B.    On  the  Exact  Time  and  Place  of  Drouet's  Ride  543 

APPENDIX  C.    The  Order  to  Cease  Fire  .....  546 

APPENDIX  D.    On  the  Loge  of  the  "  Logotachygraphe "     .         .  549 

APPENDIX  E.    Uponthe"LastPortraitoftheQueen"byKucharski  551 

APPENDIX  F.    On  the  Authenticity  of  the  Queen's  Last  Letter  552 


vii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

The  Last  Act  of  the  French  Monarchy    ....  Frontispiece 

VACIKO  PACK 

Maria  Theresa 18 

Madame  de  Pompadour 26 

The  First  Dauphin 36 

Louis  XVI. 96 

The  Emperor  Joseph  II. 138 

Marie  Antoinette,  from  the  Principal  Bust  at  Versailles  .         .  158 

The  Countess  of  Provence 172 

Marie  Antoinette,  by  Madame  Vigde  Le  Brun         „         .         .  208 

Portrait  Bust  of  the  Duke  of  Normandy          ....  220 
Autograph  Note  of  Louis  XVI.,  Recalling  Necker,  on  July  16th 

After  the  Fall  of  the  Bastille 284 

The  Tuileries  from  the  Garden,  or  West  Side,  in  1789  .  .  306 
Facsimile  of  the  First  Page  of  the  Address  to  the  French  Peo- 
ple Written  by  Louis  XVI.  Before  His  Flight  ...  348 
Map  of  the  Flight  to  Varennes  and  the  Return  .  .  (Page)  352 
Sketch  Map  of  Road  from  Paris  to  Varennes,  June  21, 1791  "  358 
Sketch  Map  to  Illustrate  Drouet's  Ride  .  "  372 

Potion 384 

Barnave 388 

Facsimile  of  the   First  Page    of  the  Letter  Written  on  Sep- 
tember 3,  1791,  by  Marie  Antoinette,  to  the  Emperor,  Her 

Brother 400 

East  Front  of  the  Tuileries 420 

An  Early  View  of  the  Approach  to  the  Tuileries  from  the  Car- 
rousel, Showing  the  Three  Courtyards      ....  430 
Contemporary  Print  of  the  Fighting  in  the  Courtyard       .         .  436 

A  Relic  of  the  Sack  of  the  Palace 440 

ix 


x  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

The  Tower  of  the  Temple  at  the  Time  of  the  Royal  Family's 

Imprisonment 444 

A  Rough  Miniature  of  the  Princess  de  Lamballe     .         .         .  450 
Sanson's  Letter  Asking  the  Authorities  What  Steps  He  is  to 

Take  for  the  Execution  of  the  King          ....  458 

Autograph  Demand  of  Louis  XVI.  for  a  Respite  of  Three  Days  460 
Report  of  the  Commissioners  That  All  is  Duly  Arranged  for 

the  Burial  of  Louis  Capet  After  His  Execution         .         .  462 

First  Page  of  Louis  XVI.'s  Will 464 

Order  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  in  Cambon's  Hand- 
writing   ..........  474 

Last  Portrait  of  Marie  Antoinette   .         .         .                  .         .  488 

Map  of  the  Battle  of  Wattignies  and  the  Relief  of  Maubeuge 

(Page)  503 
Gateway  of  the  Law  Courts  Through  Which  the  Queen  Went 

to  Her  Death .506 

First  Page  of  Marie  Antoinette's  Last  Letter  .         .         .         .  526 

Facsimile  of  the  Death  Warrant  of  Marie  Antoinette      .         .  530 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


•       '•;:    :««. 


OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION 

EUROPE,  which  carries  the  fate  of  the  whole  world, 
lives  by  a  life  which  is  in  contrast  to  that  of  every 
other  region,  because  that  life,  though  intense, 
is  inexhaustible.  There  is  present,  therefore,  in  her  united 
history,  a  dual  function  of  maintenance  and  of  change 
such  as  can  be  discovered  neither  in  any  one  of  her  com- 
ponent parts  nor  in  civilisations  exterior  to  her  own. 
Europe  alone  of  all  human  groups  is  capable  of  trans- 
forming herself  ceaselessly,  not  by  the  copying  of  foreign 
models,  but  in  some  creative  way  from  within.  She  alone 
has  the  gift  of  moderating  all  this  violent  energy,  of  pre- 
serving her  ancient  life,  and  by  an  instinct  whose  action 
i£  now  abrupt,  now  imperceptibly  slow,  of  dissolving 
whatever  products  of  her  own  energy  may  not  be  normal 
to  her  being. 

These  dual  forces  are  not  equally  conspicuous :  the  force 
that  preserves  us  is  general,  popular,  slow,  silent,  and 
beneath  us  all ;  the  force  that  makes  us  diversified  and  full 
of  life  shines  out  in  peaks  of  action. 

The  agents  and  the  transactions  of  the  conserving  force 
do  not  commonly  present  themselves  as  the  chief  person- 
alities and  the  most  remarkable  events  of  our  long  record. 
The  agents  and  the  transactions  of  the  force  that  perpetu- 

9 


4  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

ally  transforms  us  are  arresting  figures,  and  catastrophic 
actions.  Those  who  keep  us  what  we  are,  for  the  most 
part  will  never  be  known  —  they  are  millions.  Those,  on 
the  other  hand,  who  have  brought  upon  our  race  its  great 
novelties  of  mood  or  of  vesture,  the  battles  they  have  won, 
the  philosophies  they  have  framed  and  imposed,  the  polities 
they  have  called  into  existence,  they  and  their  works  fill 
history.  That  power  which  has  forbidden  us  to  perish  uses 
servants  often  impersonal  or  obscure;  it  is  mostly  to  be 
discovered  at  work  in  the  permanent  traditions  of  the 
populace  and  its  effects  are  but  rarely  visible  until  they 
appear  solid  and  established  by  a  process  which  is  rather 
that  of  growth  than  of  construction.  That  power  which 
keeps  the  mass  moving  glitters  upon  the  surface  of  it  and 
is  seen. 

There  are,  nevertheless,  in  this  perennial  and  hidden 
task  of  maintaining  Europe  certain  exceptional  events  of 
which  the  date  is  clear,  the  result  immediate,  and  the 
authors  conspicuous.  Of  early  examples  the  victory  of 
Constantine  in  the  fourth  century,  the  defeat  of  Abdul 
Rhaman  in  the  eighth,  may  be  cited.  Chief  among  those 
of  later  times  is  a  decision  which  was  taken  in  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century  by  the  French  and  Austrian 
governments  and  to  which  historians  have  given  the  name 
of  the  Diplomatic  Revolution. 

To  comprehend  or  even  to  follow  the  career  of  Marie 
Antoinette  it  is  essential  to  seize  the  nature  and  the  gravity 
of  that  rearrangement  of  national  forces,  for  it  determi 
all  her  life.    JTo  the  great  alliance  between  France  a 
Austria,  by  which   such   rearrangement  was  effected  sh 
owed   every   episode   of   her   drama.     Her   marriage,  he. 
eminence,  her  sufferings,  and  her  death  were  each  directly 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  5 

the  consequence  of  that  compact:  its  conclusion  coincided 
with  her  birth;  from  childhood  she  was  dedicated  to  it 
as  a  pledge,  a  bond,  and,  at  last,  a  victim.  Though,  there- 
fore, that  treaty  can  occupy  but  little  place  in  pages  which 
deal  with  her  vivid  life  —  a  life  lived  after  the  signing  of 
the  document  and  after  its  most  noisy  consequences  had 
disappeared  -  -  yet  the  instrument  must  be  grasped  at  the 
outset  and  must  remain  permanently  in  the  mind  of  all 
who  would  understand  the  Queen  of  France  and  her  dis- 
aster; for  it  wras  her  mother  who  made  the  alliance,  the 
statesman  who  presided  over  all  her  fortunes  planned  and 
achieved  it.  It  stands  throughout  her  forty  years  like  a 
fixed  horoscope  drawn  at  birth,  or  a  sentence  pronounced 
and  sure  to  be  fulfilled. 

The  Diplomatic  Revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century 
sprang,  like  every  other  major  thing  in  modern  history, 
from  the  religious  schism  of  the  sixteenth. 

If  that  vast  disturbance  of  the  Reformation  which  threat- 
ened so  grievously  the  culture  of  Europe,  which  maimed 
forever  the  life  of  the  Renaissance,  and  which  is  only  now 
beginning  to  subside,  had  broken  the  national  tradition 
of  Gaul  as  it  did  that  of  Briton,  it  may  confidently  be 
asserted  that  European  civilisation  would  have  perished. 
There  was  not  left  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  a 
sufficient  reserve  of  energy  to  re-indoctrinate  the  West.  A 
welter  of  small  States,  hopelessly  separated  by  the  violence 
and  self-sufficience  of  the  new  philosophy  would  each  have 
gone  down  the  road  an  individual  goes  when  he  forgets  or 
learns  to  despise  traditional  rules  of  living  and  the  cor- 
£*porate  sense  of  mankind.  That  interaction  which  is  the 
:iife  of  Europe  would  have  disappeared.  A  short  period  of 
intense  local  activities  would  have  been  followed  by  general 


6  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

repose.  The  unity  of  the  Western  world  would  have  failed, 
and  the  spirit  of  Rome  would  have  vanished  as  utterly  from 
her  deserted  provinces  as  has  that  of  Assyria  from  hers. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  French  had  chosen  the  earliest 
moment  of  the  Reformation  to  lead  the  popular  instinct 
of  Europe  against  the  Reformers,  and  to  reestablish  unity, 
if  as  early  as  the  reign  of  Francis  I.  (who  saw  the  peril) 
they  had  imagined  a  species  of  crusade,  why,  then,  the 
schism  would  have  been  healed  by  the  sword,  the  humanity 
of  the  Renaissance  would  have  become  a  permanent 
influence  in  our  lives  rather  than  an  heroic  episode  whose 
vigour  we  regret  but  cannot  hope  to  restore,  and  the  dis- 
covery of  antiquity,  the  thorough  awakening  of  the  mind, 
would  have  impelled  Europe  towards  new  and  glorious 
fortunes  the  nature  of  which  we  cannot  even  conjecture, 
so  differently  did  the  course  of  history  turn.  For  it  so 
happened  that  the  French  -  -  whose  temperament,  whose 
unbroken  Roman  legend,  and  whose  geographical  position 
made  them  the  decisive  centre  of  the  struggle  —  the  French 
hesitated  for  two  hundred  years. 

Their  religion  indeed  they  preserved.  The  attempt  to 
force  upon  the  French  doctrines  convenient,  in  France  as  in 
England,  to  the  wealthy  merchants,  the  intellectuals,  and 
the  squires  was  met  by  popular  risings ;  those  of  the  French, 
as  they  were  the  more  sanguinary  so  were  also  the  more 
successful.  The  first  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  when 
the  Catholic  leaders  were  killed  in  the  South,  was  not  for- 
gotten by  the  North;  and  after  the  second  massacre  of  St. 
Bartholomew  in  Paris  had  avenged  it,  the  Reformation 
could  never  establish  in  France  that  oligarchic  polity  which 
it  ultimately  imposed  upon  England  and  Holland.  In  a 
word,  the  Catholic  reaction  in  France  was  sufficiently  violent 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  7 

to  recover  the  tradition  of  the  State;  but  the  full  conse- 
quences of  that  reaction  did  not  follow,  nor  did  France 
support  the  general  instinct  of  Europe,  because,  allied  with 
the  Faith  to  which  the  nation  was  so  profoundly  attached 
and  had  just  preserved,  was  the  political  power  of  the 
Spanish- Austrian  Empire,  which  the  French  nation,  and  its 
leaders,  detested  and  feared. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to-day  to  comprehend  the  might  of 
Spain  during  the  century  of  the  Reformation,  and  still 
more  difficult  to  grasp  that  external  appearance  of 
overwhelming  strength  which,  as  the  years  proceeded, 
tended  more  and  more  to  exceed  her  actual  (and  declin- 
ing) power. 

The  supremacy  of  Spain  over  Europe  resided  in  a  dynasty 
and  not  in  a  national  idea.  It  did  not  take  the  form  of 
over-riding  treaties  or  of  attempting  the  partition  of  weaker 
States,  for  it  was  profoundly  Christian,  and  it  was  military; 
in  twenty  ways  the  position  of  Spain  differed  from  the  hege- 
mony which  some  modern  European  State  might  attempt 
to  exercise  over  its  fellows.  But  it  is  possible  to  arrive  at 
some  conception  of  what  that  Empire  was,  if  we  remember 
that  it  reposed  upon  a  vast  colonial  system  which  Spain 
alone  seemed  capable  of  conducting  with  success,  that  it 
monopolised  the  production  of  gold,  and  that  it  depended 
upon  a  command  of  the  sea  which  was  secured  to  it  by  an 
invincible  fleet.  To  such  advantages  there  must  further  be 
added  an  armed  force  not  only  by  far  the  largest  and  best 
trained  in  Europe,  but  mainly  composed  of  the  best  fighters 
as  well,  and  —  a  circumstance  more  important  than  all  the 
rest  --an  extent  of  dominion,  due  to  the  union  of  the 
Austrian  and  Spanish  houses,  which  gave  to  Charles  V.  and 
his  successors  the  whole  background,  as  it  were,  upon 


8  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

which  the  map  of  Europe  was  painted:  in  the  sea  of  that 
Emperor's  continental  possessions,  apart  from  a  few  insig- 
nificant principalities,  France  alone  survived  --an  intact 
island  with  ragged  boundaries,  menaced  upon  every  side. 
For  the  Emperor,  then  master  of  the  Peninsula,  of  the 
Germanics,  and  of  the  New  World,  was  everywhere  by  sea 
and  almost  everywhere  by  land  a  pressing  foe. 

However  much  this  Spanish-Austrian  power  might  stand 
(as  it  did  stand)  for  the  European  traditions  and  for  the 
faith  of  civilisation  which  France  had  elected  to  preserve, 
it  was  impossible  for  the  French  crowTn  and  nation  not  to 
be  opposed  to  its  political  power  if  that  crown  or  that 
nation  were  to  survive.  The  smaller  nations  of  the  North 
-the  English,  the  low  countries,  &c.  — were  in  less  peril 
than  the  French;  for  these  were  now  the  only  considerable 
exception  to,  and  were  soon  to  be  the  rivals  of,  the  Spanish- 
Austrian  State.  Had  the  Armada  found  fair  weather, 
Philip  might  have  been  crowned  at  Westminster;  but  the 
English  —  united,  isolated,  and  already  organized  as  a 
commercial  oligarchy  -  -  would  have  fought  their  way 
out  from  foreign  domination  as  thoroughly  as  did  the 
Dutch.  The  duty  of  the  French  was  other;  their  inde- 
pendence was  not  threatened:  it  was  rather  their  dignity 
and  special  soul  which  were  in  peril  and  which  had  to  be 
preserved  from  digestion  into  this  all-surrounding  influence 
of  Spain.  To  preserve  her  soul  France  gave  —  uncon- 
sciously perhaps,  as  a  people,  but  with  acute  consciousness 
as  a  government  —  her  whole  energies  during  four  genera- 
tions. The  defence  succeeded.  Through  a  dozen  such 
civil  tumults  as  are  native  to  the  French  blood,  and 
through  a  long  eclipse  of  their  national  power,  they 
treasured  and  built  up  their  reserves.  After  a  century  of 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  o 

peril    they    emerged,    under   Louis  XIV.  -  -  not   only    the 
masters,  but  for  a  moment  the  very  tyrants  of  Europe. 

The  French  did  not  achieve  this  object  of  theirs  without 
a  compromise  odious  to  their  clear  spirit.  In  their  secular 
opposition  to  the  Spanish-Austrian  power,  it  was  the 
business  of  their  diplomatists  to  spare  the  little  Protestant 
States  and  to  use  them  as  a  pack  for  the  worrying  of  great 
Austria,  whom  they  dreaded  and  would  break  down.  The 
constant  policy  of  Henri  IV.,  of  Richelieu,  of  Mazarin,  was 
to  strengthen  the  Protestant  principalities  of  North  Germany, 
to  meet  half  way  the  rising  Puritanism  of  England,  and 
even  at  home  to  tolerate  an  organised,  opulent,  and  numerous 
body  of  Huguenots  who  formed  a  State  within  the  State. 
At  a  time  when  it  was  death  to  say  Mass  in  England, 
the  wealthy  Calvinist  just  beyond  the  Channel  —  at  Dieppe, 
for  instance  —  was  protected  with  all  the  force  of  the  law 
from  the  fanaticism  or  indignation  of  his  fellow-citizens;  he 
could  convene  his  synods  openly,  could  hold  office  at  law  or 
in  municipal  affairs,  and  was  even  granted  a  special  form  of 
representation  and  a  place  in  the  advisory  bodies  of  the 
State.  All  this  was  done,  not  to  secure  internal  order  - 
which  would  perhaps  have  been  better  affirmed  in  France 
as  it  was  in  England  by  the  vigorous  persecution  of  the 
minority  —  but  to  create  a  Protestant  makeweight  to  what 
appeared  till  nearly  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  the 
overwhelming  menace  of  the  Spanish  and  Austrian  Houses. 

Such  was  the  policy  which  the  French  Court  wisely 
pursued  during  so  long  a  period  that  it  finally  acquired  the 
force  of  a  fixed  tradition  and  threatened  to  last  on  into  an 
era  of  new  conditions,  when  it  would  prove  useless,  or, 
later,  harmful  to  the  State.  The  general  framework  of  that 
Anti-Austrian  diplomacy  did  indeed  survive  from  the  latter 


10  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

seventeenth  till  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century;  but 
from  the  time  when  Louis  XIV.  in  1661  began  to  rule  alone 
to  that  final  rearrangement  of  European  forces  in  the 
Diplomatic  Revolution,  which  it  is  my  business  to  describe, 
the  Catholic  powers  tended  more  and  more  to  be  conscious 
of  a  common  fate  and  a  common  duty.  One  after  another 
the  portions  of  the  old  French  diplomatic  work  fell  to  pieces 
as  the  strength  of  Spain  diminished  and  as  the  small  Protes- 
tant States  advanced  in  their  cycle  of  rapid  commercial 
expansion,  increasing  population  and  military  power;  until, 
a  generation  after  Louis  XIV.'s  death,  Protestant  Europe 
as  a  whole  had  formed  in  line  against  what  was  left  of 
Rome. 

It  would  not  be  germane  to  my  subject  were  I  to  enter 
at  any  length  into  the  gradual  transformation  of  Europe, 
between  1668  and  1741.  The  first  date  is  that  of  the  treaty 
which  closed  the  last  clear  struggle  between  France  and 
Spain;  the  second  date  is  that  of  the  first  great  battle, 
Mojlwitz,^  in  which  Prussia  under  Frederick  the  Great 
appeared  as  a  triumphant  and  equal  opponent  against  the 
Catholic  forces  of  the  Empire.  It  is  enough  to  say  that 
during  that  period  the  results  of  that  great  struggle  were 
solidified.  Europe  was  now  hopelessly,  and,  as  it  seemed, 
finally  riven  asunder;  and  those  who  proposed  to  continue, 
those  who  proposed  to  disperse  the  stream  of  European 
tradition  gravitated  into  two  camps  armed  for  a  struggle 
which  is  not  even  yet  decided. 

The  transition  may  be  expressed  as  the  long  life  of  a  man 

-  nay,  it  may  be  exactly  expressed  in  the  life  of  one  man, 

Fleury,  for  he  stood  on  the  threshold  of  manhood  at   its 

commencement  and  in  sight  of  death  at  its  close :  what  such 

a  long  life  witnessed,  between  its  eighteenth  and  its  ninetieth 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  11 

year,  was  —  if  the  vast  confusion  of  detail  be  eliminated 
and  the  large  result  be  grasped  —  the  confirmation  of  the 
great  schism  and  the  final  schism  and  the  final  decision  of 
France  to  stand  wholly  against  the  North.  There  appeared 
at  last,  fixed  and  consolidated,  a  Protestant  and  a  Catholic 
division  in  Europe  whose  opposing  philosophies,  seen  or 
unseen,  denied,  ridiculed  or  ignored,  even  by  those  most 
steeped  in  either  atmosphere,  were  henceforward  to  affect 
inwardly  every  detail  of  individual  life,  as  outwardly  they 
were  to  affect  every  great  event  in  the  history  of  our  Race, 
and  every  general  judgment  which  has  been  passed  upon 
its  actions. 

The  Spanish  Power,  based  as  it  had  been,  not  on  internal 
resources,  but  on  a  naval  and  colonial  supremacy,  could 
not  but  rapidly  decline;  it  had  long  been  separated  from 
the  German  Empire;  it  was  destined  to  fall  into  the  orbit 
of  France.  On  the  other  hand,  the  England  of  the  early 
eighteenth  .century  was  no  longer  a  small  community 
absorbed  in  theological  discussion;  she  had  become  a  nation 
of  the  first  rank,  one  that  was  developing  its  industries,  its 
wealth  and  its  armed  strength.  She  boasted  in  Marlboroughy 
the  chief  military  genius  of  the  age;  she  was  already  the 
leader  in  physics;  *  she  was  about  to  be  the  leader  in 
mechanical  science  (with  all  the  riches  such  a  leadership 
would  bring) ,  and  she  was  upon  the  eve  of  acquiring  a  new 
colonial  empire. 

In  France  the  privileges  of  the  Huguenots  had  been  with- 
drawn, as  the  situation  grew  precise  and  clear,  and  the 
breach  between  them  and  the  nation  was  made  final  by 
their  active  and  zealous  treason  in  whatever  foreign  fleets 
or  armies  were  attempting  the  ruin  of  their  country.  In. 
England  it  had  been  made  plain  that  the  oligarchy,  and 


12  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  nation  upon  which  it  reposed,  would  admit  neither  a 
strong  central  government  nor  the  presence  of  the  Catholic 
Church  near  any  seat  of  power:  the  Stuart  dynasty  had 
been  exiled;  its  first  attempt  at  a  restoration  had  been 
crushed. 

Meanwhile  there  was  preparing  a  final  argument  which 
should  compel  men  to  recognise  the,  clean. and  fixed  division 
of  Europe :  that  argument  was  the  astonishing  rise  of 
Prussia,  for  with  the  appearance  upon  the  field  of  this  new 
and  strange  force  —  an  own  child  of  the  Reform  —  it  was 
evident  that  something  had  changed  in  the  very  morals 
of  war. 

When  Austria  was  at  her  weakest,  when  the  French 
Court,  bewildered  but  weakly  constant  to  a  now  meaning- 
less diplomatic  habit,  was  watching  the  apparent  dissolution 
of  the  Empire  and  was  ready  to  urge  its  armies  against 
Vienna,  when  England  remained,  and  that  only  from  oppo- 
sition to  the  Bourbons,  the  only  support  of  the  Hapsburgs, 
there  was  established  within  five  years  the  permanent 
strength  of  Frederick  the  Great  and  the  new  factor  of 
Prussian  Power:  a  complete  contempt  for  the  old  rules  of 
honour  in  negotiation  and  for  the  old  rules  of  contract  in 
dynastic  relations  had  been  crowned  b^a  complete  success. 

This  advent,  when  every  exception  -and  cross-influence 
is  forgotten,  will  remain  the  chief  moral,  and  therefore,  the 
chief  political  fact  of  the  eighteenth  century.  By  the  end 
of  the  year  1745  Silesia  was  finally  abandoned  by  Austria; 
the  Prussian  soldier  and  his  atheist  theory  had  compassed 
the  first  mere  conquest  of  European  territory  which  had 
been  achieved  by  any  European  power  since  first  Europe 
was  organised  into  a  family  of  Christian  communities. 
It  had  been  advanced  for  the  first  time  that  Europe  was 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  13 

not  one,  but  that  some  unit  of  it  might  overbear  and  rule 
another  by  arms  alone ;  that  there  was  no  common  standard 
nor  any  unseen  avenger  upon  appeal.  That  theory  had 
appealed  to  arms  and  had  conquered. 

Within  three  years  the  international  turmoil,  of  which  this 
catastrophe  was  immeasurably  the  greatest  result,  was 
subjected  to  a  sort  of  settlement.  One  of  those  general 
committees  of  all  Europe  with  which  our  own  time  is  so 
familiar  was  summoned  to  Aix-la^Chapelle ;  representa- 
tives of  the  various  Powers  confirmed  or  modified  the 
results  of  a  group  of  wars,  and  in  the  autumn  of  1748 
affixed  their  signatures  to  a  complete  arrangement  which 
was  well  known  to  be  unstable,  ephemeral,  and  insincere, 
but  which  was  yet  of  tremendous  import,  for  it  marked 
(though  in  no  dramatic  manner)  the  end  of  an  old  world. 

As  the  plenipotentiaries  left  their  accomplished  work 
and  strolled  out  of  the  room  which  had  received  them,  they 
were  still  grouped  together  by  such  weak  and  complex  ties 
as  the  interests  of  individual  governments  might  decide. 
When  they  met  again  after  the  next  brief  cycle  of  war,  these 
men  were  arranged  in  a  true  order  and  sat  opposing;  for 
England,  Prussia,  and  experiment  of  schism  on  the  one 
side;  for  the  belt  of  endurance  on  the  other.  Since  that 
cleavage  these  two  prime  bodies,  disguised  under  a  hundred 
forms  and  hidden  and  confused  by  a  welter  of  incidental  and 
secondary  forces,  have  remained  opposing,  attempting  with 
fluctuating  success  each  to  determine  the  general  fortunes 
of  the  world.  They  will  so  continue  balanced  and  opposing 
until  perhaps  —  by  the  action  of  some  power  neither  of  war 
nor  of  diplomacy  —  unity  may  be  re-established  and  Europe 
may  again  live. 

Of  the  men  who  so  strolled  out  of  the  room  at  Aix  one 


14  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

only,  still  young,  had  grasped  in  silence  the  necessity  of  the 
great  change;  he  saw  that  Vienna  and  Paris  must  in  the 
next  struggle  stand  together  and  defend  together  their 
common  civilisation  and  their  resisting  Faith.  He  not  only 
perceived  the  advent  of  this  great  reversal  in  the  traditions 
of  the  chanceries;  he  designed  to  aid  it  himself,  to  mould 
it,  and  to  determine  its  character.  That  he  could  then 
perceive  of  how  large  a  movement  his  action  was  to  be 
a  part  no  historian  can  pretend,  for  at  the  time  no  one 
could  grasp  more  than  the  momentary  issue,  and  this 
man's  very  profession  made  it  necessary  for  him,  as  for 
every  other  diplomat,  to  see  clearly  immediate  things  and 
to  abandon  distant  speculation.  But  though  his  work 
was  greater  than  himself  and  far  greater  than  his  intention, 
yet  he  deserves  a  very  particular  attention;  for  this  young 
man  of  thirty-six  was  Kai^nitp.  and  he,  for  a  whole  genera- 
tion, was  Austria. 

In  so  determining  to  effect  an  alliance  between  the  Haps- 
burgs  and  their  secular  enemy,  Kaunitz  equally  determined, 
unknown  to  himself,  the  whole  fortunes  of  Marie  Antoinette ; 
she,  years  later,  when  she  came  to  be  born  to  the  Imperial 
touse  was,  even  in  childhood,  the  pledge  he  needed.  It  is 
"aunitz  who  stands  forever  behind  the  life  of  Marie 
'Antoinette,  like  a  writer  behind  the  creature  in  his  book. 
It  is  he  who  designs  her  marriage,  who  uses  her  without 
mercy  for  the  purposes  of  his  policy  at  Versailles;  he  is 
the  author  of  her  magnificence  and  of  her  intrigue,  he  is 
then  also  indirectly  the  author  of  her  fall,  which,  in  his 
obscure  and  failing  old  age,  he  heard  of  far  away,  partially 
comprehended,  and  just  survived. 

Kaunitz  was  the  original  of  our  modern  diplomatists. 
In  that  epoch  of  governing  families  not  a  few  nobles  were 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  15 

flattered  to  be  called  "the  Coachmen  of  Europe":  he  alone 
merited  the  cant  term.  He  served  a  sovereign  whose  armies 
were  constantly  defeated;  he  was  the  adviser  of  a  mere 
crown  —  and  that  crown  worn  by  a  woman;  in  a  time 
when  the  divergent  races  of  the  Danube  were  first  astir, 
he  had  at  his  command  or  for  his  support  neither  a  national 
tradition  nor  any  strong  instrument  of  war,  yet,  by  per- 
sonal genius,  by  tenacity,  and  by  a  wide  lucidity  of  vision, 
he  discovered  and  completed  a  method  of  "government 
through  foreign  relations"  which  was  almost  independent 
of  national  feeling  or  of  armed  strength. 

An  absence  of  natural  violence,  as  of  all  common  emotions, 
was  characteristic  of  Kaunitz.  He  disdained  the  vulgar 
pomp  of  silence;  he  talked  continually;  he  knew  the 
strength  and  secrecy  of  men  who  can  be  at  once  verbose 
and  deliberate.  Nor  could  his  fluency  have  deceived  any  ^< 
careful  observer  into  a  suspicion  of  weakness,  for  his  curved 
thin  nose  and  prominent  peaked  chin,  his  arched  eyebrows, 
his  Sclavonic  type,  ready  and  courageous,  his  hard,  pale 
eyes,  showed  nothing  but  purpose  and  execution;  and  as 
his  tajl  figure  stalked  round  the  billiard  tables  at  evening, 
his  very  recreation  seemed  instinct  with  plans. 

The  abounding  energy  which  drove  him  to  success 
revealed  itself  in  a  thousand  ways,  and  chiefly  in  this, 
that  in  the  career  of  diplomacy,  where  all  individuality  is 
regarded  with  dread,  he  pushed  his  personal  tastes  beyond 
the  eccentric.  Thus  he  had  a  mania  against  all  gesticula- 
tion, and  he  would  present  at  every  conference  the  singular 
spectacle  of  a  man  chattering  and  disputing  unceasingly  and 
eagerly^  yet  keeping  his  hands  quite  motionless  aU  the 
while.  Again,  when  he  entered  the  great  houses  of  Europe 
and  dined  with  men  to  influence  whom  was  to  conduct 


16  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  world,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  bring  with  him  his  own 
dessert,  which  when  he  had  eaten  he  would,  to  the  great 
disgust  of  embassies,  elaborately  wash  his  teeth  at 
table.  In  the  midst  of  the  hardest  toil  he  was  so  foppish  as 
to  wear  various  wigs  —  now  brown,  now  white,  now  auburn. 
He  was  a  constant  traveller,  familiar  with  every  capital 
in  Western  Europe,  yet  he  so  loathed  fresh  air  that  he 
would  not  pass  from  his  carriage  to  a  palace  door  unless  his 
mouth  were  covered.  He  was  a  dandy  who,  in  drawing- 
rooms  loaded  with  scent  and  flowers,  loudly  protested  against 
all  perfume;  a  gentleman  who,  when  cards  were  the  only 
pastime  of  the  rich,  expressed  a  .detestation  of  all  hazard ; 
a  courtier  who,  amidst  all  the  extravagances  of  etiquette 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  barely  bowed  to  the  greatest 
sovereigns,  and  who,  on  the  stroke  of  eleven,  would 
abruptly  leave  the  Emperor  without  a  word. 

Such  marks  of  an  intense  initiative,  detachment  and 
pride  were  tolerated  in  the  earlier  part  of  his  life  with 
amusement  on  account  of  the  affection  he  could  inspire; 
later  they  were  regarded  with  ill  ease,  and  at  last  with  a 
sort  of  awe,  when  it  was  known  that  his  intelligence  could 
entrap  no  matter  what  combination  of  antagonist.  This 
intelligence,  and  the  single  devotion  by  which  such  natures 
are  invariably  compelled,  were  both  laid  at  the  feet  of  Maria 
Theresa. 

He  was  older  than  his  Empress  by  some  seven  years; 
there  lay  between  them  just  that  space  which  makes  for 
equality  and  comprehension  between  a  man  and  a  woman. 
The  year  of  her  marriage  had  coincided  with  that  of  his 
own  *  he  had  come  at  twenty-five  to  the  court  of  this 
young  sovereign  of  eighteen.  She  had  recognised  —  with 
a  wisdom  that  never  failed  her  long  and  active  life  —  how 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  17 

just  and  general  was  his  view  of  Europe,  and  it  was  from 
this  moment  that  her  interests  and  her  career  were  entrusted 
to  his  genius.  He  had  already  studied  in  three  universities, 
had  refused  the  clerical  profession  to  which  his  Canonry  of 
Cunster  introduced  him,  and  had  travelled  in  the  Nether- 
lands, in  France,  in  England,  and  in  Italy,  where  he  was 
made  Aulic  Councillor,  and  enfeoffed,  as  it  were,  to  the 
palace. 

His  abilities  had  not  long  to  await  their  opportunity. 
It  was  but  four  years  after  Maria  Theresa's  marriage  and 
his  own  that  she  succeeded  to  the  throne  and  possessions 
of  the  Hapsburgs :  then  it  was  the  sudden  advent  of  Prussia, 
to  which  I  have  alluded,  began  the  great  change. 

Maria  Theresa's  succession  was  in  doubt,  not  in  point  of 
right,  but  because  her  sex  and  the  condition  in  which  her 
father  had  left  his  army  and  his  treasury  gave  an  oppor- 
tunity to  the  rivals  of  Austria,  and  notably  to  France. 

Europe  was  thus  passing  through  one  of  those  crises 
of  instability  during  which  every  chancery  discounts  and 
yet  dreads  a  universal  war,  when  the  magazine  was  fired 
by  one  who  had  nothing  to  lose  but  honour.  Frederick 
of  Prussia  was  the  warmest  in  acknowledging  the  title  of 
Maria  Theresa;  he  accepted  her  claims,  guaranteed  the 
integrity  of  her  possessions,  and  suddenly  invaded  them. 

From  the  ordering  of  that  march  of  Frederick's  into 
Silesia  —  from  the  close,  that  is,  of  the  year  1740  —  Kaunitz, 
a  man  not  yet  in  his  thirtieth  year,  was  at  work  to  repair  the 
Empire  and  to  restore  the  equilibrium  of  Europe.  Upon 
the  whole  he  succeeded;  for  though  the  magnitude  of  the 
Revolutionary  Wars  has  dwarfed  his  period,  and  though  the 
coinplete  modern  transformation  of  society  has  made 
such  causes  seem  remote,  yet  (as  it  is  the  thesis  of  these 


18  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

pages  to  maintain)  Kaunitz  unconsciously  preserved  the 
unity  of  Europe. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  struggle  he  had  already  saved 
the  interests  of  Maria  Theresa  in  the  petty  Italian  courts. 
At  Florence,  at  Rome,  at  Turin,  at 'Brussels,  his  mastery 
continued  to  increase.  In  his  thirty-sixth  year  he  was 
ambassador  to  London  —  he  concluded,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle ;  by  his  fortieth  he  had  been 
appointed  to  Paris,  and  that  action  by  which  he  will  chiefly 
be  remembered  had  begun.^4lje  had  seen,  as  I  have  said, 
the  necessity  for  an  alliance  between  the  two  great  Catholic 
Powers.  Within  the  two  years  of  his  residence  in  Paris  he 
had  successfully  raised  the  principle  of  such  a  revolution  in 
policy  and  as  successfully  maintained  its  secrecy.  A  task 
which  would  have  seemed  wholly  vain  had  he  communicated 
it  to  others,  one  which  would  have  seemed  impossible  even 
to  those  whom  he  might  have  convinced,  was  achieved.  To 
his  lucid  and  tenacious  intellect  the  matter  in  hand  was  but 
the  bringing  forth  of  a  tendency  already  in  existence;  he 
saw  the  Austro-French  alliance  lying  potentially  in  the 
circumstances  of  his  time;  his  business  was  but  to  define 
and  realize  it. 

In  such  a  mood  did  he  take  up  the  Austrian  embassy  in 
Paris.  He  was  well  fitted  for  the  work  he  had  conceived. 
The  magnificence  which  he  displayed  in  his  palace  in  the 
French  capital  was  calculated  indeed  to  impress  rather  than 
to  attract  the  formal  court  of  Versailles;  that  magnificence 
was  the  product  of  his  personal  tastes  rather  than  of  his 
power  of  intrigue,  but  the  details  of  his  over-ostentatious 
household  were  well  suited  to  those  whom  he  had  designed 
to  capture.  The  French  language  was  his  own;  Italian, 
though  he  spoke  it  well,  was  foreign  to  him;  the  German 


MARIA  THERESA 

From  the  tapestry  portrait  woven  for  Marie  Antoinette 
and  recently  restored  to  Versailles 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  19 

dialects  he  knew  but  ill  and  hardly  used  at  all.  His  habits 
were  French,  to  the  end  of  his  long  life  French  literature 
was  his  only  reading,  and  his  clothes,  to  their  least  part, 
must  come  from  the  hands  of  the  French. 

He  moved,  therefore,  in  that  world  of  Paris  and  Ver- 
sailles (as  did,  later,  his  pupil,  Mercy-d 'Argenteau)  rather 
as  a  native  than  a  foreigner.  Even  if  the  alliance  had  been 
as  artificial  as  it  was  natural,  he  would  have  carried  his 
point.  As  it  was,  he  left  Paris  in  1753  to  assume  the  Prime 
Ministry  at  Vienna,  with  the  certitude  that,  when  next 
Frederick  of  Prussia  had  occasion  to  break  his  word,  the 
wealth  and  the  arms  of  the  Bourbons  would  be  ranged  upon 
the  Austrian  side. 

Upon  that  major  pivot  all  the  schemes  of  Vienna  must 
turn  at  his  dictation.  Every  marriage  must  be  contrived 
so  as  to  fall  in  with  the  projected  alliance;  every  action 
must  be  subordinated  to  the  arrangement  which  would  prove, 
as  he  trusted,  the  supreme  hope  of  the  dynasty.  To  this 
one  project  he  directed  every  power  within  him  or  beneath 
his  hand,  and  to  this  he  was  ready,  when  the  time  should 
come,  to  devote  the  fortunes  of  any  member  of  the  Royal 
House  save  its  sovereign  or  its  heir.  To  this  aspect  of  Europe, 
long  before  the  termination  of  his  mission  in  Paris,  he  had 
not  so  much  persuaded  as  formed  the  mind  of  Maria  Theresa. 

The  great  and  salutary  soul  of  that  woman  explains  in 
part  what  were  to  be  the  fortunes  of  her  youngest  child.  Not 
that  Marie  Antoinette  inherited  either  the  opportunities 
or  the  full  excellence  of  her  mother,  but  that  there  ran 
through  the  impatient  energy  and  unfruitful  graciousness 
of  the  Queen  of  France  a  flavour  of  that  which  had  lent  a 
disciplined  power  and  a  conscious  dignity  to  the  middle 
age  of  Maria  Theresa. 


20  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

The  body  of  the  Empress  was  strong.  Its  strength 
enabled  her  to  bear  without  fatigue  the  ceaseless  work  of 
her  office  and  in  the  midst  of  child-bearing  to  direct  with 
exactitude  the  affairs  of  a  troubled  State.  That  strength 
of  hers  was  evident  in  her  equal  temper,  her  rapid  judgment, 
her  fixed  choice  of  men;  it  Was  evident  also  in  her  firm 
tread  and  in  her  carriage,  and  even  as  she  sat  upon  a  chair 
at  evening  she  seemed  to  be  governing  from  a  throne. 

A  growing  but  uniform  capacity  informed  her  life.  She 
had  known  the  value  not  only  of  industry  but  also  of  enthu- 
siasm, and  had  saved  her  throne  in  its  greatest  peril  by  her 
sudden  and  passionate  appeal  to  the  Hungarians.  It  was 
this  instinctive  science  of  hers  that  had  disarmed  Kaunitz. 
If  he  allowed  her  to  suggest  what  he  had  already  determined, 
if  he  permitted  her  to  be  the  first  to  write  down  the  scheme 
of  the  Diplomatic  Revolution  he  had  conceived,  and  to  send 
'"j  down  to  history  as  her  creation  rather  than  his  own,  it  was 
not  the  desire  to  flatter  her  that  moved  him  but  a  recogni- 
tion of  her  due.  She  it  was  that  sent  him  to  Paris  and 
she  .that  superintended  the  weaving  of  the  loom  he  had 
arranged. 

Her  dark  and  pleasing  eyes,  sparkling  and  strong,  con- 
trolled him  in  so  far  as  he  was  controlled  by  any  outer 
influence,  for  he  recognized  in  them  the  Caesarian  spirit. 

Her  largeness  pleased  him.  When  she  played  at  cards, 
she  played  for  fortunes;  when  she  rode,  she  roHe  with 
magnificence;  when  she  sang,  her  voice,  though  high, 
was  loud,  untramelled,  and  full;  when  she  drove  abroad, 
it  was  with  splendour  and  at  a  noble  turn  of  speed. 

All  this  was  greatly  to  the  humour  of  Kaunitz,  and  he 
continued  to  serve  his  Empress  with  a  zeal  he  would  never 
have  given  to  a  mere  ambition.  In  deference  to  her,  all 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  21 

that  he  could  control  of  his  idiosyncrasies  he  controlled. 
His  great  bull-dog,  which  followed  him  to  every  other  door, 
was  kept  from  her  palace.  His  abrupt  speech,  his  failure 
to  reply,  his  sudden  and  brief  commands  —  all  his  manner 
-  were  mollified  in  consultation  with  his  Queen.  She,  on 
her  part,  knew  what  were  the  limits  to  which  so  singular  a 
nature  could  proceed  in  the  matter  of  self-denial.  She 
respected  half  his  follies,  and  her  servants  often  saw  her 
from  the  courtyard  shutting  the  windows,  smiling,  as  he 
ran  from  his  carriage,  his  mouth  covered  to  screen  it  from 
the  outer  air.  Her  common  sense  and  poise  forgave  in  him 
alone  extravagances  she  had  little  inclination  to  support 
in  others.  He  respected  in  her,  those  depths  of  emotion, 
of  simplicity,  and  of  faith  which  in  others  he  would  have 
regarded  as  imbecilities  ready  for  his  high  intelligence  to  use 
at  will. 

It  was  neither  incomprehensible  to  him  nor  displeasing 
that  her  temper  should  be  warmer  than  his  intelligence 
demanded.  The  increasing  strength  of  her  religion,  the 
personal  affections  and  personal  distastes  which  she  con- 
ceived, above  all,  the  closeness  of.  her  devotion  to  her  hus- 
hand,  completed,  in  the  eyes  of  Kaunitz,  a  character  whose 
dominions  and  dynasty  he  chose  to  serve  and  to  confirm; 
for  he  perceived  that  what  others  imagined  to  be  impedi- 
ments to  her  policy  were  but  the  reflection  of  her  sex  and  of 
her  health  therein. 

Kaunitz  saw  in  Frederick  of  Prussia  a  player  of  worthy 
skill.  It  was  upon  the  death  of  that  soldier  that  he  gave 
vent  to  the  one  emotional  display  of  his  life;  yet  he  per- 
mitted Maria  Theresa  to  hate  her  rival  with  a  hatred 
which  was  not  directed  against  his  campaigning  so  much  as 
against  the  narrow  intrigue  and  bitterness  of  his  evil  mind. 


n  MARIE   ANTOINETTE 

To  Kaunitz,  again,  Catherine  of  Russia  was  nothing  but 
a  powerful  rival  or  ally;  yet  he  approved  that  Maria  Theresa 
should  speak  of  her  as  one  speaks  of  the  women  of  the 
streets,  despising  her  not  for  her  ambition  but  for  her  licence. 

To  Kaunitz,  Francis  of  Lorraine,  the  husband  of  the 
Empress,  was  a  thing  without  weight  in  the  international 
game;  yet  he  saw  with  a  general  understanding,  and  was 
glad  to  see  in  detail,  the  security  of  the  imperial  marriage. 

The  singular  happiness  of  Maria  Theresa's  wedded  life 
was  due  to  no  greatness  in  Francis  of  Lorraine,  but  to  his 
vivacity  and  good  breeding,  to  his  courtesy,  to  his  refine- 
ment, and  especially  to  his  devotion.  It  suited  her  that 
he  should  ride  and  shoot  so  well.  She  loved  the  restrained 
intonation  of  his  voice  and  the  frankness  of  his  face. 
She  easily  forgave  his  numerous  and  passing  infidelities. 
The  simplicity  of  his  religion  was  her  own,  for  her  goodness 
was  all  German  as  his  sincerity  was  all  Western  and  French ; 
upon  these  two  facts  the  opposing  races  touch  when  the 
common  faith  introduces  the  one  to  the  other.  Their  house- 
hold, therefore,  was  something  familiar  and  domestic.  Its 
language  was  French,  of  a  sort,  because  French  was  the 
language  of  Francis;  but  while  he  brought  the  clarity  of 
Lorraine  under  that  good  roof,  which  covered  what  Goethe 
called  "the  chief  bourgeois  family  of  Germany,"  he  brought 
to  it  none  of  the  French  hardness  and  precision,  nor  any  of 
that  cold  French  parade  which  was  later  to  exasperate  his 
daughter  when  she  reigned  at  Versailles.  He  was  a  man 
who  delighted  in  visits  to  his  countryside,  and  who  would 
have  his  carriage  in  town  wait  its  turn  with  others  at  the 
opera  doors. 

Maria  Theresa  was  so  wedded,  served  by  such  a^Minister, 
in  possession  of  and  in  authority  over  such  a  household  dur- 


THE  DIPLOMATIC  REVOLUTION  23 

ing  those  seven  years  between  the  Peace  of  Aix-la-Chapelle 
and  the  French  Alliance,  between  1748  and  1755.  Those 
seven  years  were  years  of  patience  and  of  diplomacy,  which 
were  used  to  retrieve  the  disasters  of  her  first  bewildered 
struggle  against  Prussia  and  the  new  forces  of  Europe. 
They  were  the  seven  years  of  profound,  if  precarious,  inter- 
national peace,  when  England  was  preparing  her  maritime 
supremacy,  Prussia  her  full  military  tradition,  Uie  French 
monarchy,  in  the  person  of  Louis  XV.,  its  rapid^dissolution 
through  excess  and  through  fatigue.  They  were  the  seven 
years  which  seemed  to  the  superficial  but  acute  observation 
of  Voltaire  to  be  the  happiest  of  his  age:  a  brief  "  Antonine" 
repose  in  which  the  arts  flourish  and  ideas  might  flower 
and  even  grow  to  seeding.  They  were  the  seven  years  in 
which  the  voice  of  Rousseau  began  to  be  heard  and  in  which 
was  written  the  "  Essay  upon  Human  Inequality." 

For  the  purposes  of  this  story  they  were  in  particular  the 
seven  years  during  which  Kaunitz,  now  widowed,  working 
first  as  Ambassador  in  Paris,  then  as  Prime  Minister  by  the 
side  of  Maria  Theresa  at  Vienna,  achieved  that  compact 
with  the  Bourbons  which  was  to  restore  the  general  traditions 
of  the  Continent  and  the  fortunes  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg. 

The  period  drew  to  a  close:  the  plans  for  the  alliance  were 
laid,  the  last  discussions  Were  about  to  be  engaged,  when 
it  was  known,  in  the  early  summer  of  1755,  that  the  Empress 
was  again  with  child. 


II 

BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD 

2ND  NOVEMBER,  1755,  TO  THE  AUTUMN  OF  1768 

AL  that  summer  of  1755  the  intrigue  —  and  its  success 
-proceeded. 

I  have  said  that  the  design  of  Kaunitz  was  not 
so  much  to  impose  upon  his  time  a  new  plan  as  to  further 
a  climax  to  which  that  time  was  tending.  Accidents  in 
Europe,  in  America,  and  upon  the  high  seas  conspired  to 
mature  the  alliance. 

Fighting  broke  out  between  the  French  and  English 
outposts  in  the  backwoods  of  the  colonies.  Two  French 
ships  had  been  engaged  in  a  fog  off  the  banks  and  cap- 
tured; later,  a  sharp  panic  had  led  the  Cabinet  in  London 
to  order  a  general  Act  of  Piracy  throughout  the  Atlantic 
against  French  commerce.  It  Was  a  wild  stroke,  but  it 
proved  the  first  success  of  what  was  to  become  the  most 
fundamentally  successful  war  in  the  annals  of  Great  Britain. 

In  Versailles,  an  isolated  and  mournful  man,  fatigued 
and  silent,  who  was  in  the  last  resort  the  governing  power 
of  France,  delayed  and  delayed  the  inevitable  struggle 
between  his  forces  and  the  rising  power  of  England.  Louis 
XV.  looked  upon  the  world  with  an  eye  too  experienced  and 
too  careless  to  consider  honour.  His  clear  and  informed 
intelligence  would  contemplate  —  though  it  could  not  rem- 
edy —  the  effects  of  his  own  decline  and  of  his  failing 
will.  He  felt  about  him  in  the  society  he  ruled,  and  within 

gft 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  25 

himself  also,  something  moribund.  France  at  this  moment 
gave  the  impression  of  a  great  palace,  old  and  in  part  ruined. 
That  impression  of  France  had  seized  not  only  upon  her 
own  central  power,  but  upon  foreign  observers  as  well; 
the  English  squires  had  received  it,  and  the  new  Prussian 
soldiers.  In  Vienna  it  was  proposed  to  use  the  declining 
French  monarchy  as  a  great  prop,  and  in  using  it  to 
strengthen  and  to  revivify  the  Austrian  Empire  until  the 
older  order  of  Europe  should  be  restored.  Louis  XV., 
sitting  apart  and  watching  the  dissolution  of  the  national 
vigour  and  of  his  own,  put  aside  the  approach  of  arms  with 
such  a  gesture  as  might  use  a  man  of  breeding  whom  in 
some  illness  violence  had  disturbed.  Thus  as  late  as 
August,  when  his  sailors  had  captured  an  English  ship  of 
the  line,  he  ordered  its  release.  The  war  was  Well  ablaze 
and  yet  he  would  consent  to  no  formal  declaration  of  it; 
Austria  watched  his  necessities. 

It  was  in  September  that  Maria  Theresa  sent  word  to 
her  ambassador  in  Paris  —  the  old  and  grumbling  but 
pliant  Stahrenberg,  that  the  match  might  be  set  to  the  train : 
in  a  little  house  under  the  terrace  at  Bellevue,  a  house 
from  whose  windows  all  Paris  may  be  seen  far  away  below, 
the  secret  work  went  on. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  the  Empress  in  her  anxiety  wrote 
to  the  Pompadour  and  attempted,  by  descending  to  so 
direct  a  flattery  of  Louis  XV.'s  mistress,  to  hasten  that 
King's  adhesion  to  her  design.  The  accusation  is  false,  and 
the  document  upon  which  it  is  based  a  forgery;  but  the 
Austrian  ambassador  was  Maria  Theresa's  mouthpiece  with 
that  kindly,  quiet,  and  all-powerful  woman.  It  was  she  who 
met  him  day  after  day  in  the  little  house,  and  when  she 
retired  to  give  place  to  the  Cardinal  de  Bernis,  that  Minister 


26  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

found  the  alliance  already  fully  planned  between  Stahren- 
berg  and  the  Pompadour.  Louis  XV.  alone  was  still  reluc- 
tant. Great  change,  great  action  of  any  sort,  was  harsh 
to  him.  He  would  not  believe  the  growing  rumour  that 
Frederick  of  Prussia  was  about  to  desert  his  alliance  and  to 
throw  his  forces  on  to  the  side  of  the  English  power.  Louis 
XV.  attempted,  not  without  a  sad  and  patient  skill,  to 
obtain  equilibrium  rather  than  defence.  He  would  consider 
an  arrangement  with  Vienna  only  if  it  might  include  a 
peaceful  understanding  with  Berlin. 

As,  during  October,  these  negotiations  matured  so  slowly 
in  France,  in  Vienna  the  Empress  awaited  through  that 
month  the  birth  of  her  child.  She  jested  upon  it  with  a 
Catholic  freedom,  laid  wagers  upon  its  sex  (and  later  won 
them)^  discussed  what  sponsors  should  be  bidden,  and 
decided  at  last  upon  the  King  and  Queen  of  Portugal;  to 
these,  in  the  last  days  of  October,  her  messengers  brought 
the  request,  and  it  was  gladly  accepted  in  their  capital  of 
Lisbon.  Under  such  influences  was  the  child  to  be  born. 

The  town  of  Lisbon  had  risen,  in  the  first  colonial  efforts 
of  Portugal,  to  a  vast  importance.  True,  the  Portuguese 
did  not,  as  others  have  done,  attach  their  whole  policy  to 
possessions  over-sea,  nor  rely  for  existence  upon  the  suprem- 
acy of  their  fleet,  but  the  evils  necessarily  attendant  upon  a 
scattered  commercial  empire  decayed  their  military  power 
and  therefore  at  last  their  commerce  itself.  The  capital 
was  no  longer,  in  the  Arab  phrase,  "the  city  of  the  Chris- 
tian"; it  was  long  fallen  from  its  place  as  the  chief  port 
of  the  Atlantic  when,  in  these  last  days  of  October,1755,  the 
messengers  of  the  Empress  entered  it  and  were  received; 
but  it  was  still  great,  overlooking  the  superb  anchorage 
which  brought  it  into  being,  and  presenting  to  the  traveller 


BIRTH  AND   CHILDHOOD  27 

perhaps  half  the  population  which  it  had  boasted  in  the 
height  of  its  prosperity.  It  was  a  site  famous  for  shocks  of 
earthquake,  which  (by  a  coincidence)  had  visited  it  since 
the  decline  of  its  ancient  power;  but  of  these  no  more 
affair  had  been  made  than  is  common  with  natural  adven- 
tures. Its  narrow  streets  and  splendid,  if  not  majestic, 
churches  still  stood  uninjured. 

The  valley  upon  which  stood  the  commercial  centre  of 
Lisbon  is  formed  of  loose  clay;  the  citadel  and  the  portion 
which  to  this  day  recalls  the  older  city,  of  limestone;  and 
the  line  which  limits  the  two  systems  is  a  sharp  one.  But 
though  the  diversity  of  such  a  soil  lent  to  these  tremors  an 
added  danger,  they  had  passed  without  serious  attention 
for  three  or  four  generations;  they  had  not  affected  the 
architecture  of  the  city  nor  marred  its  history.  In  this  year, 
1755,  they  had  already  been  repeated,  but  in  so  mild  a 
fashion  that  no  heed  was  taken  of  them. 

By  All-Hallowe'en  the  heralds  had  accomplished  their 
mission,  the  Court  had  retired  to  the  palace  of  Belem, 
which  overlooks  the  harbour,  and  the  suburbs  built  high 
beyond  that  Roman  bridge  which  has  bequeathed  to  its 
valley  the  Moorish  name  of  Alcantara.  The  city,  as  the 
ambassadors  of  Maria  Theresa  and  the  heralds  of  her 
daughter's  birth  were  leaving  it,  was  awaiting  under  the 
warm  and  easy  sun  of  autumn  the  feast  of  the  morrow. 

In  the  morning  of  that  All  Saints,  a  little  after  eight,  the 
altars  stood  prepared,  the  populace  had  thronged  into  the 
churches ;  the  streets  also  were  already  noisy  with  the  opening 
[of  a  holiday;  the  ships'  crews  were  ashore;  only  the  quays 
were  deserted.  Everywhere  High  Mass  had  begun.  But 
just  at  nine  —  at  the  hour  when  the  pressure  of  the  crowds, 
both  within  the  open  doors  of  the  churches  and  without 


28  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

them,  was  at  its  fullest  —  the  earth  shook.  The  awful 
business  lasted  perhaps  ten  seconds.  When  its  crash  was 
over  an  immense  multitude  of  the  populace  and  a  third 
of  the  material  city  had  perished. 

The  great  mass  of  the  survivors  ran  to  the  deserted 
quays,  where  an  open  sky  and  broad  spaces  seemed  to  afford 
safety  from  the  fall  of  walls.  They  saw  the  sea  withdrawn 
from  the  shore  of  the  wide  harbour;  they  saw  next  a  wave 
form  and  rise  far  out  in  the  landlocked  gulf,  and  immediately 
it  returned  in  an  advancing  heap  of  water  straight  and  high 
—  as  high  and  as  straight  as  the  houses  of  the  sea  front.  It 
moved  with  the  pace  of  a  gust  or  of  a  beam  of  light  toward 
the  shore.  The  thousands  crammed  upon  the  quays  had 
barely  begun  their  confused  rush  for  the  heights  when  this 
thing  was  upon  them;  it  swirled  into  the  narrow  streets, 
tearing  down  the  shaken  walls  and  utterly  sweeping  out 
the  maimed,  the  dying  and  the  dead  whom  the  earthquake 
had  left  in  the  city.  Then,  when  it  had  surged  up  and 
broken  against  the  higher  land,  it  dragged  back  again  into 
the  bay,  carrying  with  it  the  wreck  of  the  town  and  leaving 
strewn  on  the  mud  of  its  retirement  small  marbles,  carven 
wood,  stuffs,  fuel,  provisions,  and  everywhere  the  drowned 
corpses  of  animals  and  of  men.  During  these  moments 
perhaps  twenty,  perhaps  thirty  thousand  were  destroyed. 

Two  hours  passed.  They  were  occupied  in  part  by  pil- 
lage, in  part  by  stupefaction,  to  some  extent  by  repression 
and  organization.  But  before  noon  the  accompaniment 
of  such  disasters  appeared.  Fire  was  discovered  first 
in  one  quarter  of  the  city,  then  in  another,  till  the  whole 
threatened  to  be  consumed.  The  disorder  increased. 
Pombal,  an  atheist  of  rapid  and  decided  thought,  dominated 
the  chaos  and  controlled  it  He  held  the  hesitating  court 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  29 

to  the  ruins  of  the  city;  he  organized  a  police;  as  the  early 
evening  fell  over  the  rising  conflagration  he  had  gibbets 
raised  at  one  point  after  another,  and  hung  upon  them 
scores  of  those  who  had  begun  to  loot  the  ruins  and  the 
dead. 

The  night  was  filled  with  the  light  and  the  roar  of  the 
flames  until,  at  the  approach  of  morning,  when  the  fires 
had  partly  spent  themselves  and  the  cracked  and  charred 
walls  yet  standing  could  be  seen  more  clearly  in  the  dawn, 
^some  in  that  exhausted  crowd  remembered  that  it  was  the 
Day  of  the  Dead,  and  how  throughout  Catholic  Europe  the 
requiems  would  be  singing  and  the  populace  of  all  the 
cities  but  this  would  be  crowding  to  the  graves  of  those 
whom  they  remembered. 

That  same  day,  which  in  Lisbon  overlooked  the  cloud 
of  smoke  still  pouring  from  broken  shells  of  houses,  saw 
in  Vienna,  as  the  black  processions  returned  from  their 
cemeteries,  the  birth  of  the  child. 


Maria  Theresa,  whose  vigour  had  been  constant  through 
so  many  trials,  suffered  grievously  in  this  last  child-bed  of 
hers.  She  was  in  her  thirty-seventh  year.  The  anxiety 
and  the  plotting  of  the  past  months,  the  fear  of  an  approach- 
ing conflict,  had  worn  her.  It  was  six  weeks  before  she 
could  hear  Mass  in  her  chapel;  and  meanwhile,  in  spite  of 
the  official,  and  especially  the  popular,  rejoicing  which 
followed  the  birth  of  the  princess,  a  sort  of  hesitation  hung 
over  the  court.  Francis  of  Lorraine  was  oppressed  by 
premonitions.  With  that  taint  of  superstition  which  his 
faith  condemned,  but  which  the  rich  can  never  wholly 
escape,  he  caused  the  baby's  horoscope  to  be  drawn.  The 


30  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

customary  banquet  was  foregone.  The  dreadful  news  from 
Lisbon  added  to  the  gloom,  and  something  silent  sur- 
rounded the  palace  as  the  days  shortened  into  winter. 

With  the  New  Year  a  more  usual  order  was  re-established. 
The  life  of  the  Court  had  returned;  the  first  fortnight  of 
January  passed  in  open  festivities,  beneath  the  surface  of 
which  the  steady  diplomatic  pressure  for  the  French  alliance 
continued.  It  reached  an  unexpectedly  rapid  conclusion. 
Upon  the  sixteenth  of  January  the  King  of  Prussia  suddenly 
admitted  to  the  French  ambassador  at  Berlin  that  he  had 
broken  faith  with  Louis  and  that  the  Prussian  minister  in 
London  had  signed  a  treaty  with  England.  For  a  month 
a  desperate  attempt  continued  to  prevent  the  enormous 
consequences  which  must  follow  the  public  knowledge  of 
the  betrayal.  The  aversion  of  Louis  to  all  new  action,  his 
mixture  of  apathy  and  of  judgment,  led  him,  through  his 
ambassador,  to  forego  the  insult  and  to  cling  to  the  illusion 
of  peace,  but  Frederick  himself  destroyed  that  illusion. 
His  calculation  had  been  the  calculation  of  a  soldier  in  whom 
the  clear  appreciation  of  a  strategical  moment,  the  resolu- 
tion and  courage  necessary  to  use  it,  and  an  impotence  of 
the  chivalric  functions  combined  to  make  such  decisions 
absolute.  It  was  the^  second  manifestation  of  that  moral 
perversion  which  Easx  lent  for  two  hundred  years  such 
nervous  energy  to  Prussia,  and  of  which  the  Occupation 
of  Silesia  was  the  first,  Bismark's  forgery  at  Ems  the 
latest  —  and  probably  the  final  —  example :  for  Europe 
can  always  at  last  expel  a  poison. 

Frederick,  I  say,  was  resolved  upon  war.  He  met 
every  proposal  for  reconciliation  with  German  jests  some- 
what decadent  and  expressed  in  imperfect  French,  which 
was  his  daily  language.  By  the  end  of  February,  1756, 

•T 

4?    V       // 

• 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  31 

the  attempt  to  keep  the  peace  of  Europe  had  failed,  and 
Louis  XV.,  driven  by  circumstance  and  necessity,  had  at 
last  accepted  the  design  of  Maria  Theresa  and  of  Kaunitz. 
The  treaty  would  have  been  signed  in  March  had  not  the 
illness  of  the  French  Minister,  the  Cardinal  De  Bernis 
intervened;  as  it  was,'  the  signatures  were  affixed  to  the 
document  on  the^jst  of  May.  By  summer  all  Europe  was 
in  arms.  The  little  Archduchess,  who  was  later  to  lay  down 
her  life  in  the  chain  of  consequences  which  proceeded  from 
that  signing,  was  six  months  old. 

The  first  seven  years  of  Marie  Antoinette's  life  were, 
therefore,  those  of  the  Seven  Years'  War. 

As  her  mind  emerged  into  consciousness,  the  rumours 
she  heard  around  her,  magnified  by  the  gossip  of  the  ser- 
vants to  whom  she  was  entrusted,  were  rumours  of  sterile 
victories  and  of  malignant  defeats;  in  the  recital  of  either 
there  mingled  perpetually  the  name  of  the  Empir  and 
the  name  of  Bourbon  which  she  was  to  bear.  She  could 
just  walk  when  the  whole  of  Cumberland's  army  broke 
down  before  the  French  advance  and  accepted  terms  at 
Kloster-Seven.  Her  second  birthday  cake  was  hardly 
eaten  before  Frederick  had  neutralised  this  capitulation 
by  destroying  the  French  at  Rosb.,  ..h.  The  year  which  saw 
the  fall  of  Quebec  and  the  French  disasters  in  India,  was 
that  with  which  her  earliest  memories  were  associated.  She 
could  remember  Kunersdorf,  the  rejoicings  and  the  confi- 
dent belief  that  the  Protestant  agression  was  repelled.  Her 
fifth,  her  sixth,  her  seventh  years  —  the  years,  that  is,  during 
which  the  first  clear  experience  of  life  begins  —  proved  the 
folly  of  that  confidence:  her  eighth  was  not  far  advanced 
when  the  whole  of  this  noisy  business  was  concluded  by  the 
Peace  of  Paris  and  the  Treaty  of  Herbertsburg. 


32  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

The  war  appeared  indecisive  or  a  failure.  The  original 
theft  of  Silesia  was  confirmed  to  Prussia;  the  conquest  of 
the  French  colonies  to  England.  In  their  defensive  against 
the  menace  to  which  all  European  traditions  were  exposed, 
the  courts  of  Vienna  and  Versailles  had  succeeded;  in 
their  aggressive,  which  had  the  object  of  destroying  that 
menace  forever,  they  had  failed.  In  failing  in  their  aggres- 
sive, as  a  by-product  of  that  failure,  they  had  permitted  the 
establishment  of  an  English  colonial  system  which  at  the 
time  seemed  of  no  great  moment,  but  which  was  destined 
ultimately  to  estrange  this  country  from  the  politics  of  Europe 
and  to  submit  it  to  fantastic  changes ;  to  make  its  population 
urban  and  proletariat,  to  increase  immensely  the  wealth  of 
its  oligarchy,  and  gravely  to  obscure  its  military  ideals.  In 
the  success  of  their  defensive,  as  by-products  of  that  success, 
they  had  achieved  two  things  equally  unexpected:  they 
$  had  preserved  for  ever  the  South-German  spirit,  and  had 
thus  checked  in  a  remote  future  the  organization  of  the 
whole  German  race  by  Prussia  and  the  triumph  over  it 
of  Prussian  materialism;  they  had  preserved  to  France  an 
intensive  domestic  energy  which  was  shortly  to  transform 
the  world. 

The  period  of  innocence,  then,  and  of  growth,  which 
succeeds  a  child's  first  approach  to  the  Sacraments,  corre- 
sponded in  the  life  of  Marie  Antoinette  with  the  peace  that 
followed  these  victories  and  these  defeats.  The  space 
between  her  seventh  and  her  fourteenth  years  might  have 
I  been  filled,  in  the  leisure  of  the  Austrian  Court,  with  every 
f  advantage  and  every  grace.  By  an  accident,  not  uncon- 
y  nected  with  her  general  fate,  she  was  allowed  to  run  wild. 

That  her  early  childhood  should  have  been  neglected 
is  easier  to  understand.  The  war  occupied  all  her  mother's 


<>TUM 


BIRTH  AND   CHILDHOOD  33 


energies.  She  and  her  elder  sister  Caroline  were  the  babies 
whose  elder  brother  was  already  admitted  to  affairs  of 
State.  It  was  natural  that  no  great  anxiety  upon  their 
education  should  have  been  felt  in  such  times.  The  child 
had  been  put  out  to  nurse  with  the  wife  of  a  small  lawyer 
of  sorts,  one  Weber,  whose  son  —  the  foster-brother  of 
the  Queen  —  has  left  a  pious  and  inaccurate  memorial  of 
her  to  posterity.  Here  she  first  learnt  the  German  tongue, 
which  was  to  be  her  only  idiom  during  her  childhood;  here, 
also,  she  first  heard  her  name  under  the  form  of  "  Maria 
Antoinetta,"  a  form  which  was  to  be  preserved  until  her 
marriage  was  planned. 

Such  neglect,  or  rather  such  domesticity,  would  have 
done  her  character  small  hurt  if  it  had  ceased  with  her 
earliest  years  and  with  the  conclusion  of  the  peace;  it  was 
no  better  and  no  worse  than  that  which  the  children  of  all 
the  wealthy  enjoy  in  the  company  of  inferiors  until  their 
education  begins.  But  the  little  archduchess,  even  when 
she  had  reached  the  age  when  character  forms,  was  still 
undisciplined  and  at  large.  There  was  found  for  her  and 
Caroline  a  worthy  and  easy-going  governess  in  the  Countess 
of  Brandweiss,  an  amiable  and  careless,  woman,  who 
perhaps  could  neither  teach  nor  choose  teachers  and  who 
certainly  did  not  do  so. 

All  the  warmer  part  of  the  year  the  children  spent  at 
Schoenbrlinn;  it  was  only  in  the  depth  of  winter  that  they 
visited  the  capital.  But  whether  at  Court  or  in  the  country 
they  were  continually  remote  from  the  presence  and  the 
strong  guidance  of  Maria  Theresa. 

The  Empress  saw  them  formally  once  a  week;  a  doctor 
daily  reported  upon  their  health;  for  the  rest,  all  control 
was  abandoned.  The  natural  German  of  Marie  Antoinette's 


34  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

babyhood  continued  (perhaps  in  the  very  accent  of  her 
domestics)  to  be  the  medium  of  her  speech  in  her  teens, 
and  —  what  was  of  rnore  importance  for  the  future  —  not 
only  of  her  speech  but  of  her  thought  also.  In  womanhood 
and  after  a  long  residence  abroad  the  mechanical  part 
of  this  habit  was  forgotten;  its  spirit  remained.  What 
she  read  —  if  she  read  anything  —  we  cannot  tell.  Her 
music  alone  was  watched.  Her  deportment  was  naturally 
graceful  as  her  breeding  was  good;  but  the  seeds  of  no 
culture  were  sown  in  her,  nor  so  much  as  the  elements  of 
/self-control.  Her  sprightliness  was  allowed  an  indulgence 
in  every  whim,  especially  in  a  talent  for  mockery.  She 
acquired,  and  she  desired  to  acquire,  nothing.  No  healthy 
child  is  fitjted_by_ naturejor  application  and  study;  upon 
I  aH~~such  must  continuous  habits  be  enforced  —  to  her  they 
I  were  not  so  much  as  suggested.  A  perpetual  instability 
1  became  part  of  her  mind,  and,  unhappily,  this  permanent 
weakness  was  so  veiled  by  an  inherited  poise  and  by  a  happy 
heart,  that  her  mother,  in  her  rare  observations,  passed  it 
by.  Before  Marie  Antoinette  was  grown  a  woman  that 
inner  instability  had  come  to  colour  all  her  mind;  it 
remained  in  her  till  the  eve  of  her  disasters. 

It  is  often  discovered,  when  an  eager  childhood  is  left 

too  much  to  its  own  ruling,  that  the  mind  will,  of  its  own 

energy,  turn  to  the  cultivation  of  some  one  thing.     Thus, 

in  Versailles,  the  boyhood  of  the  lonely  child,  who  was  later 

to  be  her  husband,  had  turned  for  an  interest  to  maps  and 

pad  made  them  a  passion.     With  her  it  was  not  so.     The 

/whole   of  her   active   and   over-nourished   life   lacked   the 

^ballast  of  so  much  as  a  hobby.     She  was  precisely  of  that 

kind  to  whom  a  wide,  a  careful,  and  a  conventional  training 

is  most  useful;  precisely  that  training  was  denied  her. 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  35 

The  disasters  and  what  was  worse,  the  unfruitfulness 
of  the  war  had  not  daunted  Maria  Theresa,  but  her  plans 
were  in  disarray.  The  two  years  that  succeeded  the  peace 
produced  no  definite  policy.  No  step  was  taken  to  con- 
firm the  bond  with  France  or  to  secure  the  future,  when  there 
fell  upon  her  the  blow  of  her  husband's  death;  he  had  fallen 
under  a  sudden  stroke  at  Innsbruck,  during  the  wedding 
feast  of  his  son,  leaving  to  her  and  to  his  children  not  only 
the  memory  of  his  peculiar  charm  but  also  a  sort  of  testament 
or  rule  of  life  which  remains  a  very  noble  fragment  of 
Christian  piety. 

Before  he  had  set  out  he  remembered  his  youngest 
daughter;  he  asked  repeatedly  for  the  child  and  she  was 
brought  to  him.  He  embraced  her  closely,  with  some  pre- 
sentiment of  evil,  and  he  touched  her  hair;  then  as  he  rode 
away  among  his  gentlemen  he  said,  with  that  clear  candour 
which  inhabits  both  the  blood  and  the  wine  of  Lorraine, 
"Gentlemen,  God  knows  how  much  I  desired  to  kiss  that 
child!"  She  had  been  his  favourite;  there  was  a  close 
affinity  between  them.  She  was  left  to  her  mother,  there- 
fore, as  a  pledge  and  an  inheritance,  and  Maria  Theresa, 
whose  mourning  became  passionate  and  remained  so,  was 
ready  to  procure  for  this  daughter  the  chief  advantages  of 
the  World. 

The  loss  of  her  husband,  while  it  filled  her  with  an 
enduring  sorrow,  also  did  something  to  rouse  and  to  inspire 
the  Empress  with  the  force  that  comes  to  such  natures  when 
they  find  themselves  suddenly  alone.  The  little  girl  upon 
whom  her  ambitions  were  already  fixed,  the  French  alliance 
which  had  been,  as  it  were,  the  greatest  part  of  herself, 
mixed  in  her  mind.  Maria  Theresa  had  long  connected 
in  some  vague  manner  the  confirmation  of  the  alliance  with 


36  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

some  Bourbon  marriage  —  in  what  way  precisely  or  by 
what  plan  we  cannot  tell;  her  ambassador  has  credited  her 
with  many  plans.  It  is  probable  that  none  were  developed 
when,  a  few  weeks  after  the  Emperor's  death,  there  hap- 
pened something  to  decide  her.  The  son  of  Louis  XV.,  the 
Dauphin,  was  taken  ill  and  died  before  the  end  of  the  year 
1765.  He  left  heir  to  the  first  throne  in  Europe  his  son, 
a  lanky,  silent,  nervous  lad  of  eleven,  and  that  lad  was  heir 
to  a  man  nearer  sixty  than  fifty,  worn  with  pleasure  of  a 
fastidious  kind,  and  with  the  despair  that  accompanies  the 
satisfaction  of  the  flesh.  A  great  eagerness  was  apparent 
at  Versailles  to  plan  at  once  a  future  marriage  for  this  boy 
and  to  secure  succession.  Maria  Theresa  determined  that 
this  succession  should  reside  in  children  of  her  own  blood. 

Nationality  was  a  conception  somewhat  foreign  to  her, 
and  as  yet  of  no  great  strength  in  her  mixed  and  varied 
dominions.  How  powerful  it  had  ever  been  in  France, 
what  a  menace  it  provided  for  the  future  of  the  French 
Monarchy,  she  could  not  perceive.  Of  the  silent  boy 
himself,  the  new  heir,  she  knew  only  what  her  ambassador 
told  her,  and  she  cared  little  what  he  might  be;  but  she 
saw  clearly  the  Bourbons,  a  family  as  the  Hapsburgs  were 
a  family,  a  bond  in  Catholic  Europe  with  this  boy  the  heir 
to  their  headship.  She  saw  Versailles  as  the  pinnacle 
still  of  whatever  was  regal  (and  therefore  serious)  in  Europe. 
She  determined  to  complete  by  a  marriage  the  alliance 
already  effected  between  that  Court  and  her  own. 
i  She  knew  the  material  with  which  she  had  to  deal :  Louis 
LXV.,  clear  sighted,  a  great  gentleman,  sensual,  almost 
\  lethargic,  loyal.  ShFTiaarTSiderstood  the  old  nonentity 
pf^a  Queen  keeping~her  little  place  apart;  the  King's 
spinster-daughters  struggling  against  the  influence  of  inis- 

\ 


THE  FIRST  DAUPHIN 

The  father  of  Louis  XVI. 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  37 

tresses.  She  understood  the  power  of  Choiseul,  with  whose 
active  ministry  the  King  had  so  long  allowed  his  power  to 
be  merged;  she  knew  how  and  why  he  was  Austrian 
in  policy,  and  she  forgave  him  his  attack  upon  the  Church. 
Though  Choiseul  had  not  made  the  alliance  he  so  used  it, 
and  above  all  so  maintained  it  after  the  doubtful  peace,  that 
he  almost  seemed  its  author,  as  later  he  seemed  —  though 
he  took  so  little  action  —  the  author  of  her  daughter's 
marriage.  She  did  not  grudge  the  French  Minister  such 
honours.  She  weighed  the  historic  grandeur  of  the  royal 
house,  and  what  she  believed  to  be  its  certain  future.  She 
sketched  in  her  mind,  with  Kaunitz  at  her  side,  the  marriage 
of  the  two  children  as,  years  before,  she  had  sketched  the 
alliance. 

It  was  certain  that  Versailles  would  yield,  because  Ver- 
sailles was  a  man  who,  for  all  his  lucidity  and  high  training, 
never  now  stood  long  to  one  effort  of  the  will;  but  just 
because  Louis  XV.  had  grown  into  a  nature  of  that  kind,  it 
needed  as  active,  as  tenacious,  and  as  subtle  a  mind  as  Maria 
Theresa's  to  bring  him  to  write  or  to  speak.  Writing  or 
speaking  in  so  grave  a  matter  meant  direct  action  and 
consequence;  he  feared  such  responsibilities  as  others 
fear  disaster. 

It  is  in  the  spirit  of  comedy  to  see  this  dignified  and  ample 
woman  —  perhaps  the  only  worthy  sovereign  of  her  sex 
whom  modern  Europe  has  known  —  piloting  through  so 
critical  a  pass  the  long-determined  fortunes  of  her  daughter. 
There  is  the  mother  in  all  of  it.  That  daughter  had  imper- 
illed her  life.  The  child  was  the  last  of  nine  which  she  had 
borne  to  a  husband  whose  light  infidelities  she  now  the 
more  forgave,  whose  clear  gentility  had  charmed  her  life, 
whose  religion  was  her  own,  and  in  respect  to  whose  memory 


38  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

she  was  rapidly  passing  from  a  devotion  to  an  adoration. 
The  day  was  not  far  distant  when  she  would  brood  in  the 
vault  beside  his  grave. 

The  old  man  Stahrenberg  was  yielding  his  place  (with 
some  grumbling)  to  Mercy.  He  was  still  the  Austrian 
ambassador  at  Paris  but  his  term  was  ending.  Maria 
Theresa  would  perhaps  in  other  times  have  spared  his 
pride  and  would  not  have  given  him  a  task  upon  which  he 
must  labour,  but  which  his  successor  would  enjoy;  but 
in  the  matter  of  her  little  archduchess  she  would  spare  no 
one.  She  had  hinted  her  business  to  Stahrenberg  before 
the  Dauphin's  death.  The  spring  had  hardly  broken 
before  she  was  pressing  him  to  conclude  it.  Up  to  his  very 
departure  her  importunity  pursued  him.  When  Mercy 
was  on  the  point  of  entering  his  office  (in  the  May  of  1766) 
Stahrenberg,  in  the  last  letter  sent  to  the  Empress  from  Paris 
before  his  return,  told  her  that  her  ship  was  launched. 
"She  might,"  he  wrote,  "accept  her  project  as  assured, 
from  the  tone  in  which  the  King  had  spoken  of  it." 

Maria  Theresa  had  too  firm  and  too  smiling  and  too 
luminous  an  acquaintance  with  the  world  to  build  upon 
such  vague  assurance.  The  dignity  of  the  French  throne 
was  too  great  a  thing  to  be  grasped  at.  It  must  be  achieved. 
When  old  Mme.  Geoffrin  passed  through  Vienna  in  that 
year  Maria  Antoinetta  was  kept  in  the  background  off 
the  stage — but  France  was  cultivated.  The  baby,  wrho 
was  Louis  XV. 's  great-granddaughter,  Theresa,  Leopold's 
daughter,  was  presented  to  that  old  and  wonderful  bour- 
geoise  and  made  much  of.  They  joked  about  taking  her 
to  France;  another  baby,  after  all  not  much  older,  only 
eight  years  older,  was  going  to  that  place  in  her  time. 

And,  meanwhile,  the  common  arts  by  which  women  of 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  39 

birth  perfect  their  plans  for  their  family  were  practised 
in  the  habitual  round.  The  little  girl's  personality,  all 
gilded  and  framed,  was  put  in  the  window  of  the  Haps- 
burgs.  She  was  wild  perhaps,  but  so  good-hearted!  In 
the  cold  winter  you  heard  of  (all  winters  are  cold  in  Vienna) 
she  came  up  in  the  drawing-room  wrhere  the  family  sat 
together  and  begged  her  mother  to  accept  of  all  her  savings 
for  the  poor  —  fifty-five  ducats ! 

Little  Mozart  had  come  in  to  play  one  night.  He  had 
slipped  upon  the  unaccustomed  polish  of  the  floor.  The 
little  archduchess,  when  all  others  smiled,  had  alone  pitied 
and  lifted  him!  Maria  Theresa  met  the  French  ambassador 
and  told  him  in  the  most  indifferent  way  how  her  youngest, 
when  she  was  asked  whom  (among  so  many  nations)  she 
would  like  to  rule,  had  said,  "The  French,  for  they  had 
Henri  IV.  the  good  and  Louis  XIV.  the  great."  Weary 
though  he  was  of  such  conventionalities,  the  ambassador 
was  bound  by  the  honour  of  his  place  to  repeat  them. 

There  still  stood,  however,  in  this  summer  of  1766, 
between  the  Empress's  plan  and  its  fruition  a  power  as 
feminine,  as  perspicuous,  and  as  exact  in  calculation  as 
her  own.  The  widow  of  the  Dauphin,  the  mother  of  the 
new  heir  at  Versailles,  opposed  the  match. 

She  would  not  retire,  as  the  Queen,  her  mother-in-law,  had 
done,  into  dignity  and  nothingness,  nor  would  she  admit  — 
so  tenacious  of  the  past  are  crowns  —  that  the  Bourbons 
and  the  Hapsburgs  had  all  the  negotiations  between  them. 
She  was  of  the  Saxon  House,  and  though  it  was  but  small  — 
a  northern  bastion  as  it  were,  of  the  Catholic  Houses  —  yet 
she  had  inherited  the  tradition  of  monarchy,  and  she  might, 
but  for  her  husband's  sudden  death,  have  inherited  Ver- 
sailles itself.  She  was  still  young,  vigorous  and  German. 


40  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

She  had  determined  not  only  that  her  son,  the  new  heir, 
should  marry  into  her  house  —  should  marry  his  own 
cousin,  her  niece  —  but  that  he  should  marry  as  she  his 
mother  chose,  and  not  as  the  Hapsburgs  chose.  He  was  at 
that  moment  (in  1766)  not  quite  twelve;  the  bride  whom 
she  would  disappoint  not  quite  eleven  years  old!  But  her 
plan  was  active  and  tenacious,  her  readiness  alive,  when 
in  the  beginning  of  the  following  year,  in  March,  1767, 
she,  in  her  turn  died,  and  with  her  death  that  obstacle  to 
the  fate  of  the  little  archduchess  also  failed. 

With  every  date,  as  you  mark  each,  it  will  be  the  more 
apparent  that  the  barriers  which  opposed  Marie  Antoinette's 
approach  to  the  French  throne,  failed  each  in  turn  at  the 
climax  of  its  resistance,  and  that  her  way  to  such  eminence 
and  such  an  end  was  opened  by  a  number  of  peculiar 
chances,  all  adjutants  of  doom. 

The  House  of  Hapsburg  was  never  a  crowned  nationality ; 
it  was  and  is  a  crowned  family  and  nothing  more.  Its 
States  were  and  are  attached  to  it  by  no  common  bond. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  Austria:  the  Hapsburgs  are  the 
reality  of  that  Empire.  The  French  Bourbons  were,  upon 
the  contrary,  the  chiefs  of  a  nation  peculiarly  conscious  of 
its  unity  and  jealous  of  its  past.  Their  greatness  lay  only 
in  the  greatness  of  the  compact  quadrilateral  they  governed 
and  of  the  finished  language  of  their  subjects,  and  in  the 
achievements  of  the  national  temper.  Such  conditions 
favoured  to  the  utmost  the  scheme  of  Maria  Theresa,  not 
only  in  the  detail  of  this  marriage,  but  in  all  that  successful 
management  of  the  French  alliance  which  survived  her 
own  death  and  was  the  chief  business  of  her  reign.  She 
could  be  direct  in  every  plan,  unhampered,  considering 
only  the  fortunes  of  her  house;  Louis  XV.,  and  his  Ministers, 


BIRTH  AND  CHILDHOOD  41 

as  later  his  grandson,  were  trammelled  by  the  complexity  (I 
of  a  national-life  of  which  thag^were  themselves  a  part.  I 

^Versailles' had  not  declared  itself:  Vienna  pressed.  It 
was  in  March  that  active  opposition  within  the  Court  had 
died  with  the  mother  of  the  heir.  Within  a  month  the 
French  ambassador  at  Vienna  wrote  home  that  "the  mar- 
riage was  in  the  air":  but  the  King  had  not  spoken. 

In  that  summer,  as  though  sure  of  her  final  success,  the 
Empress  threw  a  sort  of  prescience  of  France  and  .of  high 
fortunes  over  the  nursery  at  Schoenbriinn.  The  amiable 
Brandweiss  disappeared ;  the  severe  and  unhealthy  Lorchen- 
feld  replaced  her. 

The  French  (and  baptismal  form)  of  the  child's  name, 
"Antoinette,"  was  ordered  to  be  used:  still  Versailles 
remained  dumb. 

In  the  autumn  the  parallels  of  the  siege  were  so  far 
advanced  that  a  direct  assault  could  be  made  on  poor 
Dufort,  the  advanced  work  of  the  Bourbons,  their  ambassa- 
dor at  Vienna. 

Dufort  had  been  told  very  strictly  to  keep  silent.  He 
suffered  a  persecution.  Thus  he  was  standing  one  evening 
by  the  card-tables  talking  to  his  Spanish  colleague,  when 
the  Empress  came  up  and  said  to  this  last  boldly:  "You 
see  my  daughter,  sir  ?  I  trust  her  marriage  will  go  well ; 
we  can  talk  of  it  the  more  freely  that  the  French  ambassa- 
dor here  does  not  open  his  lips." 

The  child's  new  governess  was  next  turned  on  to  the 
embarrassed  man  to  pester  him  with  the  recital  of  her 
charge's  virtues.  The  approaching  marriage  of  her  elder 
sister,  Caroline  with  the  Bourbons  of  Naples  was  dangled 
before  Dufort. 

The  play  continued  for  a  year.     Louis  XV.  bade  his 


42  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

minister  get  the  girl's  portrait,  but  "not  show  himself  too 
eager."  He  is  reprimanded  even  for  his  c$urtj£sies,  and 
all  the  while  Dufort  must  stand  the  fire  of  the  Court  of 
Vienna  and  its  exaggerated  deference  to  him  and  its 
occasional  reproaches!  Choiseul  was  anxious  to  see  the 
business  ended.  Dufort  was  as  ready  (and  as  weary) 
as  could  have  been  the  Empress  herself,  but  the  slow  balance 
of  Louis  XV.  stood  between  them  all  and  their  goal. 

In  the  summer  of  the  next  year,  1768,  the  Empress's  eldest 
son,  Joseph,  now  associated  with  her  upon  the  throne, 
determined  to  press  home  and  conclude.  It  was  the  first 
time  that  this  man's  narrow  energy  pressed  the  Bourbons 
to  determine  and  to  act;  it  was  not  to  be  the  last.  He  was 
destined  so  to  initiate  action  in  the  future  upon  two  critical 
occasions  and  largely  to  determine  the  fortunes  of  his 
sister's  married  life  and  final  tragedy. 

He  wrote  to  Louis  XV.  a  rambling  letter,  chiefly  upon 
the  marriage  of  yet  another  sister  with  the  Duke  of  Parma. 
It  wandered  to  the  Bourbon  marriage  of  Caroline;  he  men- 
tioned his  own  child,  the  great-granddaughter  of  the  King. 
It  was  a  letter  demanding  and  attracting  a  familiar  answer. 
It  drew  its  quarry.  Louis,  answering  with  his  own  hand 
and  without  emphasis,  in  a  manner  equally  domestic  and 
familiar,  threw  in  a  chance  phrase:  .  .  .  These 

marriages,  your  sister's  with  the  Infante,  that  of  the 
Dauphin.  ..."  In  these  casual  four  words  a  document 
had  passed  and  the  last  obstacle  was  removed. 

The  Empress  turned  from  her  major  preoccupation  to  a 
minor  one.  This  child  of  hers  was  to  rule  in  France:  she 
was  now  assured  of  the  throne;  she  was  near  her  thirteenth 
birthday  —  and  she  had  been  taught  nothing. 


I 
in 

THE  ESPOUSALS 

THE  fortnightly  despatches  from  France  customarily 
arrived  at  Vienna  together  in  one  bag  and  in  the 
charge  of  one  courier.  The  Empress  would  receive 
at  once  the  letters  of  Mercy,  the  official  correspondence,  per- 
haps the  note  of  a  friend,  and  the  very  rare  communications 
of  royalty.  In  this  same  batch  which  brought  that  decisive 
letter  of  Louis  XV.  to  her  son,  on  the  same  day,  therefore, 
in  which  she  was  first  secure  in  her  daughter's  future,  there 
also  arrived  the  usual  secret  report  from  Mercy.  This 
document  contained  a  phrase  too  insignificant  to  detain  her 
attention;  it  mentioned  the  rumour  of  a  new  intrigue:  the 
King  showed  attachment  to  a  woman  of  low  origin  about 
him.  It  was  an  attachment  that  might  be  permanent. 
This  news  was  immediately  forgotten  by  Maria  Theresa; 
it  was  a  detail  that  passed  from  her  mind.  She  perhaps 
remembered  the  name,  which  was  "Du  Ban 


The  Court  of  Vienna,  permeated  (as  was  then  every 
wealthy  society)  with  French  culture,  was  yet  wholly  Ger- 
man in  character.  The  insufficiency  which  had  marked  the 
training  of  the  imperial  children  —  especially  of  the  youngest 
-  was  easily  accepted  by  those  tcr^wliom  a  happy  domestic 
spirit  made  up  for  every  other  lack  injthe  family-  _Of  tVmsp 
who  surrounded  the  little  arc5mluchess  two  alone,  perhaps, 

43 


44  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

understood  the  grave  difference  of  standard  between  such 
education  as  Maria  Antoinetta  had  as  yet  received  and  the 
conversation  of  Versailles ;  but  these  two  were  Kaunitz  and 
Maria  Theresa,  and  short  as  was  the  time  before  them, 
they  did  determine  to  fit  the  child,  in  superficial  things  at 
least,  for  the  world  she  was  to  enter  and  in  a  few  years,  to 
govern.  They  failed. 

Mercy  was  instructed  to  find  a  tutor  who  should  come  to 
Vienna  and  could  accomplish  the  task.  He  applied  to 
Choiseul.  Choiseul  in  turn  referred  the  matter  to  the  best 
critic  of  such  things,  an  expert  in  things  of  the  world,  the 
Archbishop  of  Toulouse.  That  prelate,  Lomenie  de  Brienne, 
whose  unscrupulous  strength  had  judged  men  rightly  upon 
so  many  occasions  and  had  exactly  chosen  them  for  political 
tasks  had  in  this  case  no  personal  appetite  to  gratify  and 
was  free  to  choose.  A  post  was  offered.  His  first  thought 
was  to  obtain  it  for  one  who  was  bound  to  him,  a  protege 
and  a  dependant.  He  at  once  recommended  a  priest  for 
whom  he  had  already  procured  the  librarianship  of  the 
Mazarin  Collection,  one  Vermond.  The  choice  was  not 
questioned,  and  Vermond  left  to  assume  functions  which  he 
could  hardly  fulfil. 

There  was  needed  here  a  man  who  should  have  been 
appalled  by  the  ignorance  he  might  discover  in  his  charge, 
who  should  be  little  affected  by  grandeur,  who  should  be 
self-willed,  assertive,  and  rapid  in  method.  One  whom  the 
Empress  might  have  ridiculed  or  even  disliked,  but  whom 
she  would  soon  have  discovered  to  be  indispensable  to  her 
plan.  Such  a  man  would  have  tackled  his  business  with 
an  appreciation  of  its  magnitude,  would  have  insisted  upon 
a  full  control,  would  have  communicated  by  his  vigour  the 
atmosphere  of  French  thought,  careless  of  the  German 


THE  ESPOUSALS  45 

shrinking  from  the  rigidity  of  the  French  mind.  He  would 
have  worked  long  hours  with  little  Marie  Antoinette,  he 
would  have  filled  the  days  with  his  one  object,  he  would 
have  shocked  and  offended  all,  his  pupil  especially,  and  in 
a  year  he  would  have  left  her  with  a  good  grounding  in  the 
literature  of  his  country,  with  an  elementary  but  a  clear 
scheme  of  the  history  and  the  political  forces  which  she  was 
later  to  learn  in  full,  with  an  enlarged  vocabulary,  a  good 
accent,  and  at  least  the  ability  to  write  clearly  and  to  Work 
a  simple  sum.  His  pupil  would  have  been  compelled  to 
application ;  her  impulse  would  have  been  permanently  har- 
nessed; she  would  have  learnt  for  life  the  value  of  a  plan. 
Such  a  tutor  would  hardly  have  desired  and  would  cer- 
tainly not  have  acquired  a  lasting  influence  later  on  at 
Versailles.  His  work  would  have  been  done  in  those 
critical  years  of  childhood  once  and  for  all.  He  would 
probably  have  fallen  into  poverty.  In  later  years  he 
might  have  appeared  among  the  revolutionaries,  but  he 
would  have  found,  face  to  face  with  the  Revolution,  a 
trained  Queen  who,  thanks  to  him,  could  have  dealt  with 
circumstance. 

In  the  place  of  such  a  man  Vermond  arrived. 

He  was  a  sober,  tall,  industrious  priest  of  low  birth; 
his  father  had  let  blood  and  perhaps  pulled  teeth  for  the 
needy.  His  reserve  and  quiet  manners  reposed  upon  a 
spirit  that  was  incapable  of  ambition,  but  careful  to  secure 
ample  means  and  to  establish  his  family  and  himself  in  the 
secure  favour  of  his  employers.  He  was  of  middle  age, 
a  state  into  which  he  had  entered  early  and  was  likely  long 
to  remain.  His  mind  within  was  active  and  disciplined;  its 
exterior  effect  was  small.  He  thought  to  accomplish  his 
mission  if  he  was  but  regular  in  his  reports,  laborious  in 


46  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

his  own  study,  and,  above  all,  tactful  and  subtle  in  handling 
the  problem  before  him. 

To  such  a  character  was  presented  an  exuberant  child, 
growing  rapidly,  vivacious,  somewhat  proud,  and  hitherto 
unaccustomed  to  effort  of  any  kind,  a  monkey  for  mimicry, 
clever  at  picking  up  a  tune  upon  the  keys,  a  tomboy  shout- 
ing her  German  phrases  down  the  corridors  of  Schoenbriinn, 
a  fine  little  lady  at  Vienna  —  acting  either  part  well.  The 
light  russet  of  her  hair  and  her  thick  eyebrows  gave  promise 
of  her  future  energy;  she  had  already  acquired  the  tricks 
of  rank,  the  carriage  of  the  head  and  the  ready  mechanical 
interest  in  inferiors  —  for  the  rest  she  was  empty.  In  this 
critical  fourteenth  year  of  hers,  during  which  it  was  pro- 
posed to  fashion  out  of  such  happy  German  childhood  a 
strict  and  delicate  French  princess,  she  did  not  read  and 
she  could  barely  write.  The  big  round  letters,  as  she 
painfully  fashioned  them  in  her  occasional  lessons,  were 
those  of  a  baby.  Her  drawing  was  infantile;  and  while 
she  rapidly  learnt  a  phrase  in  a  foreign  language  by  ear,  a 
complete  revolution  in  her  education  would  have  been 
needed  to  make  her  accurate  in  the  use  of  words  or  to  make 
her  understand  a  Latin  sentence  or  parse  a  French  one. 

To  cultivate  such  a  soil,  exactly  one  hour  a  day  was 
spared  when  the  Court  was  at  Vienna  —  somewhat  more 
when  it  was  in  the  country  —  and  these  few  minutes  were 
consumed  in  nothing  more  methodical  than  a  dialogue, 
little  talks  in  which  Vermond  was  fatally  anxious  to  bring 
before  his  pupil  (with  her  head  full  of  those  new  French 
head-dresses  of  hers,  the  prospect  of  Versailles,  and  every 
other  distraction  of  mind)  only  such  subjects  as  might 
amuse  her  inattention. 

The  early  months  of  1769  were  full  of  this  inanity,  Ver- 


THE  ESPOUSALS  47 

mond  regularly  reporting  progress  to  the  Austrian  embassy 
in  France,  regularly  complaining  of  the  difficulty  of  his 
task,  regularly  insisting  upon  his  rules  and  as  regularly 
failing  in  his  object.  In  the  autumn  the  Empress  was  at 
the  pains  of  asking  her  daughter  a  few  questions,  notably 
upon  history.  The  result  did  not  dissatisfy  her,  but  mean- 
while Maria  Antoinetta  could  hardly  write  her  name. 

Side  by  side  with  this  continued  negligence  in  set  training 
and  in  the  discipline  that  accompanies  it,  went  a  very  rapid 
development  in  manner.  The  child  was  admitted  to  the 
Court;  she  was  even  permitted  the  experiment  of  presiding 
at  small  gatherings  of  her  own.  The  experiment  succeeded. 
She  acquired  with  an  amazing  rapidity  what  little  remained 
to  be  learned  of  the  externals  of  rank.  The  alternate  phrases 
addressed  to  one's  neighbours  round  a  table,  the  affecta- 
tion of  satiety  and  of  repose,  the  gait  in  which  the  feet  are 
hardly  lifted;  the  few  steps  forward  to  meet  a  magnate, 
the  fewer  to  greet  a  lesser  man,  and  that  smiling  immobility 
before  the  ordinary  sort,  which  is  still  a  living  tradition  in 
great  drawing-rooms;  the  power  of  putting  on  an  air  in 
the  very  moment  between  privacy  and  a  public  appearance 
-  all  these  came  to  her  so  naturally  and  by  so  strongly 
inherited  an  instinct,  that  she  not  only  charmed  the  genial 
elders  of  the  Austrian  capital  but  satisfied  experienced 
courtiers,  even  those  visitors  from  France,  who  examined 
it  all  with  the  eyes  of  connoisseurs  and  watched  her  deport- 
ment as  a  work  of  art,  whose  slight  errors  in  technique  they 
could  at  once  discover  but  whose  general  excellence  they 
were  able  to  appreciate  and  willing  to  proclaim. 

She  did  indeed  preserve  beneath  that  conventional  sur- 
face a  fire  of  vigorous  life  that  was  apparent  in  every  hour. 
Once  in  the  foreign  atmosphere  of  France  and  subject  to 


48  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

exasperation  and  contrast,  that  heat  would  burst  forth. 
She  became,  as  her  future  showed,  capable  of  violent  scenes 
in  public  and  of  the  natural  gestures  of  anger  —  it  is  to 
her  honour  that  she  was  on  the  whole  so  often  herself.  Here 
at  Vienna  in  this  last  year  her  young  energy  did  no  more 
than  lend  spirit  and  grace  to  the  conventions  she  so  quickly 
acquired. 

The  opening  of  the  year  1770  found  her  thus,  her  German 
half  forgotten,  her  French  (though  imperfect)  habitual, 
her  acquaintance  with  the  air  of  a  Court  considerable. 
Though  she  was  still  growing  rapidly  she  was  now  dressed 
as  a  woman  and  taught  to  walk  on  her  high  heels  as  did  the 
ladies  her  seniors.  Her  hair  was  brushed  off  her  high 
forehead  in  the  French  manner,  the  stuff  of  her  frocks  and 
the  cut  of  them  was  French,  her  name  was  now  permanently 
Frenchified  for  her,  and  she  heard  herself  called  everywhere 
"Marie  Antoinette";  none  but  old  servants  were  left  to 
give  her  the  names  she  had  first  known. 

March  passed  and  the  moment  of  her  departure 
approached.  The  child  had  never  travelled.  To  her 
vivacious  and  eager  temper  the  prospect  of  so  great  a  journey 
with  so  splendid  an  ending  was  an  absorbing  pleasure.  It 
filled  her  mind  even  during  the  retreat  which,  under  Ver- 
mbnd's  guidance,  she  entered  during  Holy  Week,  and  every 
sign  of  her  approaching  progress  excited  in  her  a  vivid 
curiosity  and  expectation,  as  it  did  in  her  mother  a  mixture 
of  foreboding  and  of  pride. 

The  official  comedy  which  the  Court  played  during 
April  heightened  the  charm:  the  heralds,  the  receptions, 
that  quaint  but  gorgeous  ceremony  of  renunciation,  the 
mock-marriage,  the  white  silver  braid  and  the  white  satin 
of  her  wedding-clothes,  the  salvoes  of  artillery  and  the 


THE  ESPOUSALS  49 

feasts  were  all  a  fine  great  play  for  her,  with  but  one  inter- 
lude of  boredom,  when  her  mother  dictated,  and  she  wrote 
(heaven  knows  with  what  a  careful  guidance  of  the  pen) 
a  letter  which  she  was  to  deliver  to  the  King  of  France.  With 
that  letter  Maria  Theresa  enclosed  a  note  of  her  own, 
familiar,  almost  domestic,  imploring  Louis  XV.,  her  con- 
temporary, to  see  to  the  child  as  "one  that  had  a  good 
heart,"  .  .  .  but  was  ardent  and  a  trifle  wild. 

These  words  were  written  upon  the  twentieth  of  the 
month;  on  the  morning  of  the  twenty-first  of  April,  177()? 
the  line  of  coaches  left  the  palace,  and  the  archduchess 
took  the  western  road. 

There  was  no  sudden  severance.  Her  eldest  brother, 
Joseph,  he  who  was  associated  with  her  mother  in  the  empire, 
accompanied  her  during  the  whole  of  the  first  day.  Of  an 
active,  narrow,  and  formal  intelligence,  grossly  self-sufficient, 
arithmetical  in  temper,  and  with  a  sort  of  native  atheism 
in  him  such  as  stagnates  in  minds  whose  development  is 
early  arrested,  a  philosopher  therefore  and  a  prig,  earnest, 
lean,  and  an  early  riser,  he  was  of  all  companions  the  one 
who  could  most  easily  help  Marie  Antoinette  to  forget 
Vienna  and  to  desire  Versailles.  The  long  hours  of  the 
drive  were  filled  with  platitudes  and  admonitions  that 
must  easily  have  extinguished  all  her  regrets  for  his  Court 
and  have  bred  in  her  a  natural  impatience  for  the  new 
horizons  that  were  before  her.  He  left  her  at  Melk.  She 
continued  her  way  with  her  household,  hearing  for  the 
last  time  upon  every  side  the  German  tongue,  not  knowing 
that  she  heard  also,  for  the  last  time,  the  accents  of  sincere 
affection  and  sincere  servility:  the  French  temper  with 
its  concealed  edges  of  sharpness  was  to  find  her  soon  enough. 

Her  journey  was  not  slow  for  the  times.     She  took  but 


50  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

little  more  than  a  week  to  reach  the  Rhine  from  Augsburg 
-  a  French  army  on  the  march  has  done  no  better.  It 
was  on  the  evening  of  the  sixth  of  May  that  she  could  see, 
far  off  against  the  sunset,  the  astonishing  spire  of  Strasburg 
and  was  prepared  to  enter  France;  only  the  Rhine  was 
now  between  her  and  her  new  life. 

She  bore  upon  her  person  during  this  last  night  on 
German  soil  a  last  letter  of  her  mother's  which  had  reached 
her  but  the  day  before  yesterday.  It  was  the  most  intimate 
and  the  most  searching  she  was  to  receive  in  all  the  long 
correspondence  which  was  to  pass  between  them  for  ten 
years,  and  it  contained  a  phrase  which  the  child  could  hardly 
understand,  but  which,  if  texts  and  single  phrases  were  of 
the  least  advantage  to  conduct,  might  have  deflected  her 
history  and  that  of  Europe.  '  The  one  felicity  of  this 
world  is  a  happy  marriage:  I  can  say  so  with  knowledge; 
and  the  whole  hangs  upon  the  woman,  that  she  should  be 
willing,  gentle,  and  able  to  amuse." 

Next  day  at  noon  she  crossed  in  great  pomp  to  an  island 
in  mid-river,  where  a  temporary  building  of  wood  had  been 
raised  upon  the  exact  frontier  for  the  ceremony  of  her 
livery. 

It  is  possible  that  the  long  ritual  of  her  position  —  she  was 
to  endure  it  for  twenty  years !  —  was  already  a  burden 
upon  her  versatility,  even  after  these  short  weeks.  Here, 
on  this  island,  the  true  extent  of  the  French  parade  first  met 
her.  It  Was  sufficient  to  teach  her  what  etiquette  was  to 
mean.  The  poor  child  had  to  take  off  every  stitch  of  her 
clothes  and  to  dress,  to  a  ribbon  or  a  hair  pin,  with  an  order 
strictly  ordained  and  in  things  all  brought  from  Versailles 
for  the  occasion.  Once  so  dressed  she  was  conducted  to  a 
central  room  where  her  German  household  gave  her  to  her 


THE  ESPOUSALS  51 

French  one,  at  the  head  of  which  the  kindly  and  sometimes 
foolish  Comtesse  de  Noailles  performed  the  accustomed 
rites,  and  the  archduchess  entered  for  ever  the  million 
formalities  of  her  new  world.  They  had  not  yet  fatigued 
her.  She  was  taken  to  Mass  at  the  Cathedral;  she  received 
the  courtesy  of  the  old  bishop,  a  Rohan,  in  whose  great 
family  Strasburg  was  almost  an  appanage.  ^ 

There  was  a  figure  standing  by  the  Bishop's  side.  She  saw, 
clothed  in  that  mature  majesty  which  a  man  of  thirty  may 
have  for  a  child  of  fifteen,  the  bishop's  coadjutor,  a  nephew 
and  a  Rohan  too.  She  noted  his  pomposity  and  perhaps 
his  good  looks,  but  he  meant  nothing  to  her;  he  was  but 
one  of  the  Rohans  to  be  remembered.  He  noted  her  well. 

Next  day  and  for  six  more  her  journey  proceeded  amid 
perpetual  deputations,  Latin,  flowers,  bad  verses,  stage 
peasantry,  fireworks,  feasts,  and  addresses,  until,  a  week  after 
she  had  crossed  the  Rhine,  she  slept  at  Soissons  and  knew 
that  on  the  morrow  she  would  see  the  King. 

The  pavement  of  the  long  road  out  from  Soissons,  the 
great  royal  road,  had  sounded  under  the  wheels  of  her  car- 
riage for  now  the  best  part  of  the  day.  She  had  already 
found  Choiseul  awaiting  her  in  state  and  had  exchanged 
with  this  old  friend  of  her  mother's  those  ceremonial  compli- 
ments of  which  the  child  was  now  well  weary,  when,  through 
the  left-hand  window  of  her  coach,  which  was  open  to  the 
warm  spring  day,  she  saw  before  her  a  thing  of  greater 
interest  —  the  league-long  line  of  trees  that  ends  abruptly 
against  the  bare  plain  and  that  marks  the  forest  of 
Compiegne. 

Into  this  wood  the  road  plunged,  straight  and  grand, 
until  after  a  declivity,  where  a  little  stream  is  crossed  (near 
the  place  where  the  railway  lines  join  to-day)  there  appeared 


52  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

awaiting  her,  as  Choiseul  had  awaited  her  some  miles 
before,  a  great  and  orderly  group  of  people,  of  carriages,  and 
horses;  but  this  company  was  far  larger  and  was  ranked 
with  more  solemnity  than  others  that  had  met  her  upon  her 
progress.  She  knew  that  it  was  the  King. 

The  splendour  which  a  history  full  of  trumpets  had  lent 
to  the  French  name,  the  lineage  of  the  kings,  the  imagined 
glories  of  Versailles  —  all  these  had  penetrated  the  nursery 
and  the  schoolroom  of  the  princess.  As  she  came  down 
from  her  carriage,  with  either  hand  reposing  in  the  hands  of 
her  escort,  an  awe  of  the  Capetian  monarchy  came  upon 
her,  and  she  knelt  upon  the  roadway  in  the  midst  of  the 
Court,  of  the  princesses  who  now  first  saw  the  little  heiress 
of  their  lives,  of  the  gilded  carriages  and  the  men-at-arms. 

The  King  raised  her  up  and  kissed  her  forehead;  he 
motioned  forward  a  heavy,  lanky,  frowning  boy,  his  grand- 
son, for  whom  all  this  pomp  existed.  The  lad  shuffled 
forward,  bent  a  little  perhaps,  and  kissed  her  in  his  turn 
with  due  ceremony  —  for  he  was  to  be  her  husband.  When 
this  little  ritual  and  its  sharp  emotions  were  over  she  had  a 
moment,  before  her  introductions  to  the  Blood,  to  the 
King's  mature  daughters,  to  the  Orleans  and  the  rest,  in 
which  to  seize  with  the  bright  glance  that  was  always  so 
ready  for  exterior  things,  the  manner  of  the  King. 

Louis  XV.  was  at  that  moment  a  man  just  past  his  six- 
tieth year.  Long  habit  had  given  him,  as  it  gives  to  all 
but  the  greatest  of  those  educated  to  power,  an  attitude 
constrained  though  erect.  His  age  had  told  on  him,  he  had 
grown  somewhat  fat,  he  moved  without  alertness  and  — 
a  weakness  which  had  appeared  but  lately  -  -  his  rare  and 
uncompleted  gestures  expressed  the  weight  of  his  body; 
but  his  muscles  were  firm,  his  command  of  them  perfect, 


V          OF          s 

THE  ESPOUSALS  53 

and  he  still  had,  especially  in  repose,  so  far  as  age  can  have 
it,  grace. 

The  united  pallor  of  his  complexion,  which  had  been 
remarkable  in  youth,  seemed  now  more  consonant  to  his 
years.  The  steady  indifference  to  which  he  had  reduced 
his  features  was  now  more  dignified  than  when  its  rigidity 
had  seemed  unnatural  and  new.  His  expression  even 
acquired  a  certain  strength  from  the  immobility  and  firm- 
ness of  his  mouth  whose  lines  displayed  a  talent  for  exact 
language  and  a  capacity  for  continued  dignity;  but  his 
eyes  betrayed  him. 

They  were  warm  in  spite  of  a  habit  of  command,  but  the 
sadness  in  them  (which  was  profound  and  permanent)  was 
of  a  sort  which  sprang  from  physical  appetites  always 
excessive  and  now  surviving  abnormally  beyond  their  time. 
There  was  also  in  those  eyes  the  memory  of  considerable 
but  uprooted  affections,  and,  deeper,  of  a  fixed  despair, 
and  deeper  far  —  a  veil  as  it  were  behind  their  brightness 
-  the  mortal  tedium,  to  escape  from  which  this  human 
soul  had  sacrificed  the  national  traditions  and  the  ancient 
honour  of  the  crown. 

This  great  monarch,  whom  no  one  since  his  boyhood  had 
approached  without  a  certain  fear,  received  his  grandson's 
betrothed  with  an  air  almost  paternal.  It  was  a  relaxation 
upon  his  part  to  which  he  owed,  during  the  remainder  of 
his  life,  the  strongly  affectionate  respect  which  Marie 
Antoinette,  vivacious  and  ungoverned,  paid  to  him  alone 
in  the  palace. 

He  presented  the  rest  in  turn.  She  heard  names  which 
were  to  mix  so  intimately  with  her  own  destiny,  and  when 
they  set  out  again  upon  the  road  she  could  discreetly  watch 
during  the  long  ten  miles  to  Compiegne,  Chartres  who 


54  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

would  soon  be  Orleans,  the  faded  faces  of  the  King's 
spinster-daughters,  the  old  Duke  of  Ponthievre;  and  she 
watched  with  a  greater  care  that  daughter  of  his  whose 
foolish,  dainty,  and  sentimental  face,  insecure  upon  its 
long  thin  neck,  was  that  of  a  young,  unhappy  widow:. the 
Princesse  de  Lamballe. 

When  they  had  slept  at  Compiegne  in  state,  the  whole 
pageant  moved  on  next  morning  down  the  Paris  road  upon 
the  last  day's  march  of  that  journey,  and  the  child  thought 
that  she  was  now  upon  the  threshold  of  nothing  but  an 
easy  glory.  She  was  nearing  —  amid  great  mobs  and  a  whole 
populace  come  out  to  greet  her,  not  only  Paris  and  Ver- 
sailles, but  much  more  —  that  woman  whose  name  her 
mother  had  heard  and  half  forgotten,  whose  name  she 
herself  had  never  heard.  It  was  a  name  wrhose  influence 
was  to  deflect  the  first  current  of  her  life:  the  name  of 
Du  Barry. 


There  is  but  one  instrument  efficacious  to  the  govern- 
ment of  men,  which  is  Persuasion,  and  Persuasion  sickens 
when  its  agent  fails  in  dignity. 

Dignity  is  the  exterior  one  of  the  many  qualities  necessary 
to  commandment;  these  in  some  cases  touch  closely  upon 
virtue,  so  that,  in  some  situations  of  authority,  a  dignified 
man  is  presumably  a  good  one.  But  in  the  particular  case 
of  national  government  it  is  not  so.  The  audience  is  so 
vast,  the  actor  so  distant  and  removed,  that  in  this  matter 
dignity  resides  mainly  in  the  observance  of  whatever  ritual 
the  national  temper  and  the  national  form  of  the  executive 
demand.  Such  functions  of  ritual  endanger  rather  than 
strengthen  the  soul  of  him  who  is  called  upon  to  assume  them. 


THE  ESPOUSALS  55 

To  his  intimates  they  appear  as  mummeries.  It  is  often  a 
sign  of  personal  excellence  in  a  ruler  that  he  is  disgusted  with 
them  and  even  casts  them  aside;  but  they  are  necessary  to 
the  State.  For  if  such  ritual  is  ill-observed,  dignity  fails; 
in  its  failure  persuasion,  I  say,  sickens,  and  when  persuasion 
sickens,  government,  upon  which  depends  the  cohesion  of  a 
nation  and  the  co-ordination  of  its  faculties,  breaks  down. 

The  method  of  government  in  France  at  this  time  was 
a  true  personal  monarchy. 

The  institution  had  increased  in  consciousness  and  in 
executive  power  down  the  long  avenue  of  fourteen  hundred 
years.  Its  roots  were  in  Rome.  It  stood  up  in  the  seventh 
century  as  a  memory  of  the  Roman  Peace,  in  the  eighth 
as  a  promise  to  restore  the  Roman  order.  From  the  ninth 
onward  it  was  vested  in  a  Gaulish  family  and  already  had 
begun  to  express  the  Gaulish  unities;  by  the  thirteenth  its 
mission  was  ardent  and  victorious.  When  the  religious 
wars  of  the  sixteenth  century  were  resolved  in  a  national 
settlement  and  the  Bourbon  branch  was  finally  acknowl- 
edged, the  crown  was  supreme  and  the  whole  people  held 
to  and  were  summed  up  in  the  Monarchy.  It  had  made 
a  yeoman  of  the  serf,  it  had  welded  the  nation  together,  it 
had  established  the  frontiers,  it  had  repressed  the  treason 
of  the  wealthy  Huguenots:  it  was  France. 

The  person  of  the  Monarch  was  public  and  publicly 
worshipped.  His  spoken  words  were  actually  law:  he 
could  impose  a  peace;  his  private  decision  could  suspend 
a  debt,  imprison  a  transgressor,  ruin  or  create  an  industry. 
Into  such  a  mould  had  the  French  energy  forced  the  execu- 
tive when  the  genius  of  Richelieu  and  the  cunning  of  Mazarin 
confirmed  the  powers  of  the  throne,  and  left  them  in  legacy 
to  the  virile  sense  of  Louis  XIV, 


56  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

This  King  was  very  great  and  cast  accurately  also  to 
the  part  he  should  fill.  The  conventions  and  the  trap- 
pings of  the  part  delighted  him;  he  played  it  royally,  and 
when  he  died,  though  he  left  the  crown  to  an  infant  great- 
grandson,  yet  its  security  seemed  as  permanent  as  does 
to-day  the  security  in  similar  powers  of  our  English  rich. 
But  that  great-grandson,  at  first  gradually  and  at  last 
rapidly,  undermined  the  stable  seat  he  had  inherited.  Louis 
XV.,  by  his  good  qualities  as  well  as  by  his  evil,  tended  more 
and  more  to  reject  the  ritual  necessary  to  his  kingship.  His 
good  breeding  and  his  active  physical  appetites,  his  idleness 
and  his  sincerity,  all  combined  to  weary  him  of  the  game, 
so  that  at  the  end  of  his  long  reign  he  had  almost  ceased  in 
the  eyes  of  the  populace  to  be  a  King  at  all. 

The  Monarchy  therefore  perished,  and  mainly  through 
Louis  XV. 's  incapacity  to  maintain  its  essential  livery. 
Its  collapse,  its  replacement  (with  consequences  enormous 
to  the  whole  of  Europe)  by  that  other  French  formula 
which  we  call  "The  Revolution"  or  "The  Republic"  was 
so  exactly  contemporaneous  with  Marie  Antoinette's  mar- 
riage and  with  her  presence  at  Versailles,  that  far  too  great 
a  part  in  the  catastrophe  is  assigned  to  her  own  mis- 
judgments  and  misfortunes.  No  error  or  disaster  of  hers 
gave  the  death  shock  to  the  institution  with  which  her  life 
was  mingled;  that  stroke  had  been  f  delivered  before  the 
child  crossed  the  Rhine,  and  the  moment  when  the  blow 
was  struck  was  that  in  which  Mercy  had  penned  the  name 
"Du  Barry,"  which  Maria  Theresa  had  read  so  carelessly 
in  Vienna  on  the  same  day  that  brought  the  letter  sealing 
her  daughter's  marriage. 

The  public  appearance  of  Madame  Du  Barry  was  the 
turning  point  in  the  history  of  Versailles,  and  the  little 


THE  ESPOUSALS  57 

archduchess,  when  she  came  upon  French  earth,  did  not 
bring  a  curse  to  her  new  country,  for  the  destiny  of  that   /I 
country  was  already  determined;  rather  this  France  which  I 
she  had  entered  had  prepared  a  tragedy  for  her  and  a  fate  / 
expected  by  her  own  unhappy  stars. 

Those  who  have  watched  the  destruction  of  an  old  and 
strong  wall  will  remember  that  it  seemed  at  first  to  resist 
with  ease  every  battery  of  the  assault.  At  last  there  came 
one  effort,  more  violent  than  the  rest,  which  broke  long, 
zig-zag  lines  throughout  the  fabric.  The  work  was  done. 
A  few  succeeding  impacts  visibly  disintegrated  the  now 
loosened  stones  until  the  whole  fell  rapidly  into  ruin.  So  it 
was  with  the  French  Monarchy.  The  Regency,  the  float-  ; 
ing  theories  of  public  criticism,  the  indeterminate  foreign/ 
policy,  the  military  reverses  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  the 
careless  lethargy  of  touis  XV.  in  State  affairs,  had  impaired  M 
the  fabric  of  tradition,  but  that  fabric  still  stood.  It  might 
yet  have  been  restored  and  made  whole  had  not  the  King 
in  his  last  years  chosen  a  particular  mistress  and  presented 
her  in  a  particular  manner,  which  threw  chaos  into  the 
scheme  which  every  Frenchman  took  for  granted  when  he 
considered  his  sovereign.  This  last  thud,  coming  after 
so  many  accumulated  tremours,  loosened  all  the  wall.  The 
trials  and  distractions  of  the  next  reign  did  but  pull  apart, 
and  that  easily,  the  loosened  stones.  The  imposing  posture 
which  the  French  demand  of  their  symbols  had  been  dropped 
by  the  old  King;  the  new  one  could  not  restore  it.  Choose 
at  random  any  man  or  woman  of  your  acquaintance  in 
history,  put  them  upon  the  throne  after  the  death  of  Louis 
XV.,  and  though  the  succeeding  quarter  of  a  century  would 
have  varied  somewhat  with  various  individualities  in  power, 

the  doom  of  the  Monarchy  would  by  none  have  been  averted. 

1 


58  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Let  us  see  what  happened  when  that  fatal  news  of 
Madame  Du  Barry's  advent  spread  through  the  Court 
and  the  capital  of  France  and  reached,  like  the  ripple  of  a 
wave,  the  shores  of  Vienna. 

The  King  (as  has  almost  every  other  king  in  history)  had 
indulged  his  body;  he  had  also  indulged  his  desire  for 
intimate  companionship,  his  man's  whim  for  an  expression, 
a  tone  of  voice,  or  a  gesture.  This  licence,  which  to  their 
bane  is  granted  to  privileged  and  symbolic  men,  had  led 
him  into  every  distraction.  His  amours  were  many,  but 
middle  age  had  fixed  his  routine,  if  not  his  constancy,  upon 
one  woman  of  remarkable  character. 

Madame  de  Pompadour,  as  she  came  later  to  be  called, 
was  not  of  the  nobility.  To  have  taken  a  mistress  publicly 
from  the  rank  of  business  people  was  a  serious  reproach 
to  the  King;  but  though  the  mass  condemned  such  an 
alliance,  and  though  the  wealthy,  both  of  the  middle  class 
and  of  the  courtiers,  found  an  added  blame  in  the  financial 
reputation  of  her  father  and  the  notorious  lightness  of  her 
mother,  yet  there  was  about  this  young,  vigorous,  and  com- 
manding hostess  something  that  could  prevent  too  violent 
a  reaction  of  opinion. 

She  was  extremely  rich;  her  drawing-room  had  held  all 
the  famous  men  of  her  day;  her  education  .was  wide  and 
liberal,  her  judgment  excellent.  She  played  and  sang 
with  exceptional  charm.  She  had  good  manner;  she  rode, 
spoke,  read,  and  entertained  as  might  the  principal  of  her 
contemporaries. 

The  acknowledged  position  of  such  a  woman  at  Court, 
though  a  new  degradation,  was  a  tolerable  one.  It  was 
easy  for  the  most  reserved  to  understand  how,  in  those 
years  between  thirty  and  forty  when  the  strong*  oA^ 


THE  ESPOUSALS  59 

take  root,  the  King  had  found  in  her  company  a  sort  of 
home.  Her  character  was,  moreover,  comprehensible  and 
secretly  sympathetic  to  that  vast  proprietary  body,  the 
Bourgeoisie,  which  then  were  and  are  now  the  stuff  of  the 
nation. 

She  was  prudent,  she  could  choose  a  friend  or  a  servant; 
her  vivacity  did  not  lack  restraint.  She  was  decent,  fond  of 
quiet  silk,  of  good  taste  in  decoration  and  of  management. 
Her  position  at  Versailles  was  a  sort  of  opjiquest  effected 
by  the  middle  classes  over  the  Court.  Such  a  mistress, 
ruling  for  many  years,  tne  nation  received  at  last  with  far 
more  calm  than  could  the  buzzing  nobles  of  tlie  palace. 
As  she  (and  the  King)  grew  older,  as  her  power  became 
absolute  and  his  individual  presence  grew  remote,  the 
situation  was  acceptable  to  Paris  even  more  than  to  those 
who  immediately  surrounded  the  throne. 

She  died.  There  was  an  interval  of  puzzled  silence 
about  the  person  of  the  King.  No  one  dreamt  of  a  new 
power  at  Court.  A  nullity  of  action  in  the  King  himself, 
a  few  more  stories,  obscure  and  scandalous,  the  end  of  the 
reign  and  the  accession  of  the  heir  who  should  bring  with 
him  such  reforms  as  all  the  intellect  of  the  country 
demanded:  these  were  the  expectations  which  followed 
her  death,  and  especially  were  they  the  hope  or  the  certitude 
of  that  group  of  men,  mostly  not  noble,  who  had  long 
managed  both  law  and  finance. 

This  prospect  had,  however,  omitted  one  capital  factor 
in  the  calculation.  Louis  XV.,  during  these  long  years  of 
regular  habit,  had  grown  old,  and  age  in  such  a  character, 
thus  isolated,  thus  re-entrant,  and  yet  hungry  for  whatever 
might  tempt  the  senses,  could  only  lead  to  some  appalling 
error.  In  years  he  was,  when  Madame  de  Pompadour 


60  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

died,  but  little  past  fifty,  but  that  blindness  to  exterior 
opinion  and  that  carelessness  for  the  future  which  properly 
belong  to  an  age  much  more  advanced,  had  already 
spread  like  a  veil  over  his  mind.  After  an  interval  of  less 
than  four  years  from  the  Pompadour's  death,  the  nation 
and  the  capital  and  those  leaders  of  opinion  who  awaited 
a  mere  negative  decline  full  of  petty  rumours  but  con- 
trolled as  to  great  affairs  by  that  Choiseul  whom  the  Pompa- 
dour herself  had  chosen  for  Minister,  were  presented  with 
the  Du  Barry:  the  scandal  and  its  effect  were  overwhelming. 
This  woman  was  a  prostitute.  -. 


IV 
THE  DU  BARRY 


THE  presence  of  the  Du  Barry  at  the  Court  of  Ver- 
sailles, the  fact  that  this  presence   preceded  the 
Austrian  child's  arrival,  that  it  was  first  publicly 
admitted  at  the  first  public  appearance  of  the  Dauphiness, 
and  that  the  four  years  of  her  tutelage  were  overshadowed  \ 
by  the  new  Royal  Mistress  was  the  initial  and  irretrievable  I 
disaster  of  Marie  Antoinette's  life.     It  moulded  her  view  / 
of  the  nation  and  of  the  family  with  whom  she  had  now  to 
mingle;  it  deeply  affected  the  populace  she  was  to  attempt 
to  rule;  it  cloistered,  warped  and  distracted  her  vision  of 
France  at  a  moment  in  adolescence  when  vision  is  most 
acute  and  the  judgment  formed  upon  it  most  permanent. 
All  the  Queen's  tragedy  is  furnished  by  the  early  spell  of 
this  insignificant  and  licentious  woman. 

With  her  advent  was  introduced  for  the  first  time  into 
the  Court  that  insolent  and  calculated  disregard  for  rule 
in  gesture  and  vocabulary  in  which  the  rich  will  often 
secretly  relax  their  ordered  lives,  but  which,  when  it  appears 
publicly  amidst  their  daily  furniture,  is  as  shocking  as 
nakedness  or  as  blood. 

Judged  in  the  pure  light  of  human  morals  the  position 
of  the  Du  Barry  was  surely  less  offensive  to  God  than  that 
of  any  mistress  any  King  has  ever  chosen.  Louis  wronged 
no  one  by  this  whim.  He  wrecked  no  remains  of  chastity 
—  the  woman  had  never  known  the  meaning  of  the  word. 

61 


62  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

He  wronged  no  subject  (as  has  and  does  almost  every  royal 
lover  in  every  amour) — her  marriage  had  been  but  a 
hurried  form  run  through  to  satisfy  etiquette,  "that  she 
might  be  presented  at  Court."  He  provided  himself  with 
a  companion  too  inferior  to  make  political  intrigue  her 
main  ambition,  and  with  one  that  could  and  did  surround 
him  with  an  abject  but  constant,  familiar,  and  comfortable 
affection.  It  was  such  a  vagary  of  old  age  as  those  in  which 
have  terminated  countless  lives,  when  old  gentlemen  of 
breeding  but  of  enfeebled  will  surround  their  last  years  with 
youth  and  with  the  vigour,  tainted  vigour,  that  is  inseparable 
from  vulgarity.  There  is  not  one  of  us  but  has  come  upon 
a  dozen  such  unions:  they  are  often  confirmed  by  a  tardy 
marriage. 

But  in  the  case  of  Louis  and  this  scandal  of  his  a  neces- 
sary element  to  such  disgrace,  the  element  of  retirement, 
was  lacking.  Those  symbols  which,  if  they  are  insisted 
upon,  are  mere  hypocrisies  but  which,  taken  normally,  are 
the  guardians  of  a  tolerable  life,  were  outraged.  The  eyes 
of  the  noblewomen  at  Versailles  were  full,  some  of  a  real 
or  affected  timidity,  others  of  a  real  or  affected  dignity. 
Such  ladies  as  chose  to  be  sprightly  or  even  to  advertise 
their  loose  habit  with  over-brilliant  and  vivacious  looks, 
retained,  considered,  and  could  always  assume,  refinement; 
but  the  beautiful  eyes  of  the  Du  Barry  were  brazen.  The 
mignardises  which  are  always  ill-suited  to  a  woman  might 
be  deliberately  affected  by  the  less  subtle  of  the  more  elderly 
beauties:  with  the  Du  Barry,  despite  her  evident  youth, 
they  had  already  become  native  and  ineradicable.  She 
lisped  alarmingly;  she  lolled,  or,  when  it  was  necessary 
for  her  to  sit  erect,  was  awkward.  Her  entry  into  a  room 
was  conscious;  her  assertions  loud,  her  amiability  oiled, 


THE  DU  BARRY  63 

her  animosities  superficially  violent.  It  is  upon  solemn 
occasions  that  such  deficiencies  are  most  glaring,  and 
solemn  occasions  were  of  continual  recurrence  at  Versailles. 
In  a  word,  she  was  most  desperately  out  of  place,  and  there- 
fore produced  an  effect  as  of  dirt,  jarring  against  whatever 
was  palatine  and  splendid  in  the  evil  of  the  Court  by  her 
parade  of  the  loose  good-nature  and  the  looser  spites  of  the 
Parisian  brothels. 

Yet  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  what  had  brought  the  King  in 
to  so  fixed  a  relation  with  her.  Whoever  will  compare  any 
of  the  portraits  of  her  by  Drouais  with  any  by  Boucher  of 
the  Pompadour  will  see,  not  the  same  character  indeed,  but 
the  same  brows  and  forehead. 

Louis  could  not  continue  in  those  early  and  familiar 
relations  with  her  which  had  become  a  necessity  to  him, 
unless  in  some  way  her  place  were  publicly  acknowledged; 
but  to  force  such  a  personality  upon  the  Court,  to  give  it 
precedence  and  to  see  that  its  position  should  be  permanent, 
was  an  effort  he  had  avoided  for  months.  A  scene  was 
intolerable  to  him.  He  suffered  from  the  most  common 
defect  attaching  to  men  of  lineage  and  wealth  in  that  he 
feared,  or  rather  could  not  endure,  the  prospect  of  violence. 
Orders  even,  and  debate,  if  they  were  of  a  personal  and 
verbal  kind,  he  shrank  from  as  do  some  men  from  loud 
noises.  The  more  important  and  decisive  of  his  actions 
were  effected  in  short  notes,  every  line  of  which,  as  we  read 
them  to-day,  manifest  his  urgent  need  of  isolation:  of 
getting  the  business  done  without  the  friction  of  another 
presence,  and  once  done,  put  aside  for  ever. 

For  the  public  presentation  of  the  Du  Barry  the  marriage 
of  his  grandson,  and  especially  the  presence  of  the  little 
archduchess,  offered  a  fatal  opportunity.  It  would  be 


64  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

impossible  for  the  malicious  to  allude  to  the  office  of  the 
Mistress  in  the  presence  of  the  child;  the  occasion  would 
compel  the  princes  and  princesses  of  the  blood  to  attend, 
and  would  equally  forbid  any  general  revolt.  He  deter- 
mined to  give  the  archduchess  a  formal  banquet  on  the 
journey  before  the  Court  and  its  company  had  reached 
Versailles,  to  summon  to  it  the  chief  members  of  the  Court, 
and  to  let  them  find  at  table,  without  warning,  the  woman 
whose  existence  had  hitherto  not  been  spoken  of  in  his 
presence. 

The  official  limit  of  Paris  upon  the  west  —  in  those  days 
-  a  line  drawn  far  beyond  the  houses  and  enclosing  many 
fields,  gardens,  and  suburbs,  ran  from  what  is  now  the 
Trocadero  to  what  is  now  the  Arc  de  Triomphe.  Out- 
side the  gate  or  barrier  was  an  empty  space  of  land  but 
partially  cultivated,  and  with  no  more  than  a  scattered 
house  or  two  upon  it,  save  where,  along  the  waterside  and 
on  the  hill  above  it,  clustered  the  village  of  Passy.  This 
empty  space  merged  gradually  into  what  were  then  the 
wild  and  unfrequented  Boulogne  woods.  Just  on  the 
edge  of  these,  in  a  situation  which  was  close  to  the  town 
and  yet  upon  one  side  accessible  to  the  forest,  stood  a 
royal  hunting-box  called  "La  Muette,"  which  had  gradu- 
ally developed  into  a  little  palace.  Here,  on  the  evening  of 
the  day  after  Compiegne,  the  long  and  splendid  train  of  the 
Court  arrived,  bearing  in  the  chief  coach  the  King,  the 
Dauphin,  and  this  new  Austrian  girl  for  whom  Louis  had 
already  shown  so  much  respect  and  tenderness,  and  whose 
entry  into  her  rank  he  was  yet  to  distort. 

The  day  had  been  long  for  the  child,  but  her  curiosity 
and  the  vitality  of  her  years  had  forbidden  her  to  feel 
fatigue. 


THE  DU   BARRY  65 

.  Dense  mobs  of  people,  cheering  and  running  by  the  side 
of  the  carriages,  had  indeed  been  familiar  to  her  since  her 
babyhood,  but  the  vivacity  and  the  shrillness  and  the 
surprising  contrasts  of  this  active  civilisation,  its  solemn 
roads,  its  simple  architecture,  broken  by  an  occasional 
and  unexpected  magnificence,  the  long  lines  of  ordered 
trees  which  here  seemed  as  native  as  in  her  own  country 
they  had  seemed  artificial  and  foreign;  the  half-hour's 
glimpse  of  an  austere  French  convent  which  she  had  had 
WThen  she  visited  at  St.  Denis  (in  passing) ;  the  King's 
daughter,  veiled  among  the  Carmelites;  the  outskirts  of  a 
gigantic  city  such  as  she  had  never  known  —  all  these  suf- 
ficed to  distract  her  until  the  fall  of  the  cold  spring  evening, 
when  the  line  of  carriages  clattered  into  the  paved  court- 
yard of  La  Muette. 

As  though  such  experiences  were  not  sufficient  to  bewilder 
her  with  the  new  world,  the  girl  found  when  she  came  to 
her  room,  attended  by  Madame  de  Noailles  and  the  ladies 
of  her  suite,  such  a  parade  of  diamonds  upon  her  table  as 
to-day  one  will  see  only  in  the  vulgar  surroundings  of  a 
public  show. 

The  instinct  for  gems  which  was  latent  in  her,  but  which 
the  extreme  simplicity  of  the  Austrian  Court  had  not  per- 
mitted to  arise,  awoke  at  once.  They  were  the  diamonds 
of  the  woman  who  would  have  been  her  mother-in-law,  had 
she  lived,  or  rather  who,  had  she  lived,  would  never  have 
permitted  this  marriage.  They  had  reverted  to  the  Crown 
upon  her  death,  and  Louis  XV.  had  had  them  placed 
there  upon  Marie  Antoinette's  table  in  readiness  for  her 
appearance;  he  had  so  sent  them  partly  from  a  sort  of 
paternal  kindness,  partly  from  a  desire  typical  in  him  to 
exceed  even  in  giving  pleasure;  but  also,  perhaps,  partly  to 


66  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

atone  for  the  harm  he  was  about  to  do  her.  For  \vhen 
the  child  came  down,  some  two  hours  later,  and  was  led  in 
the  strict  etiquette  of  the  Court  procession  into  the  dining- 
hall  of  the  little  palace,  she  could  not  but  notice  throughout 
the  meal  that  followed  a  constraint  less  natural  than  that 
regular  constraint  of  the  French  court  life  which,  in  twenty- 
four  hours  of  experience,  had  already  struck  her  quick 
apprehension.  It  was  not  that  men  and  women  Waited  for 
the  King  to  speak,  but  that  their  answers  were  given  without 
vivacity,  and  WTith  that  curious  mixture  of  restraint  and  pur- 
pose which  she  had  already  perhaps  noticed,  in  her  brief 
acquaintance  with  the  French,  to  be  the  mark  of  their 
conversation  in  anger.  She  saw  also  that  the  old  King 
looked  straight  before  him  with  something  of  sullenness 
in  his  dignity,  and  she  saw  sitting  next  to  him  a  woman 
whose  presence  there  must  have  perpetually  intrigued  her 
imagination.  That  woman  was  the  Du  Barry. 

To  whatever  adventures  and  novelties  the  children  of 
gentlefolk  are  exposed,  there  is  always  one  note  of  vulgarity 
which  they  can  make  nothing  of,  and  which,  while  it  offends 
them,  disturbs  and  astonishes  them  much  more  than  it 
offends.  In  the  midst  of  that  curiously  silent,  erect,  and 
very  splendid  table,  where  forty  of  her  sex  and  of  her  rank 
were  present,  the  presence  of  this  one  woman  was  in  its  nervous 
effect  like  the  intolerable  reiteration  of  a  mechanical  sound 
interrupting  a  tragic  strain  of  music.  The  Du  Barry  had 
not  the  art,  so  common  to  the  poorest  members  of  the 
nobility  or  of  the  middle  class,  when  they  would  slip  in 
among  the  wealthy,  of  remaining  silent  and  of  affecting  a 
reverence  for  her  new  surroundings.  She  held  herself 
with  a  loose  ease  before  them  all,  was  perhaps  the  only  one 
to  laugh,  and  permitted  herself  an  authority  that  was  the 


THE  DU  BARRY  67 

more  effective  because  it  hardly  concealed  her-  very  great 
hesitation  in  this  first  public  recognition  of  her  place. 

What  the  child  Marie  Antoinette  made  of  such  an  appari- 
tion will  never  be  known.  Her  first  letters  to  her  mother 
upon  the  matter  come  later,  when  she  had  fully  understood 
the  insult  or  at  least  the  indignity  which  had  been  done  her. 
The  only  record  we  possess  of  her  emotion  is  this:  that 
when  just  after  supper  some  courtier  was  at  the  pains 
to  ask  her  with  infinite  respect  and  a  peculiar  irony,  what 
she  had  thought  of  Madame  Du  Barry,  she  said,  "  Charm- 
ing," and  nothing  more. 

Next  day  in  the  early  morning  the  coaches  took  on  again 
the  last  steps  of  the  journey  to  Versailles.  Twelve  miles 
which  were  a  repetition  of  those  scenes,  those  crowds,  and 
i  those  cheers  of  which  the  little  archduchess  was  now 
sufficiently  weary,  but  which  were  leading  up  to  that  event 
towards  which  her  childhood  had  been  directed,  and  which 
could  not  but  drive  out  of  her  mind  the  doubts  of  the 
evening  before. 

By  ten  o'clock  the  procession  had  passed  the  great  gates 
of  Versailles ;  three  hours  were  spent  in  the  long,  distressing, 
and  rigid  ceremonies  of  the  Court  in  whose  centre  she  was 
now  placed  and  whose  magnificence  now  first  enveloped 
her.  It  was  one  before  the  procession  formed  for  the  mar- 
riage ceremony,  and  had  placed  at  the  head  of  it  the  girl, 
and  the  boy  whom,  in  this  long  trial  of  two  days,  she  had 
but  little  regarded. 

She  came  under  the  high  vault  of  the  new,  gilded  chapel 
as  full  of  life  as  the  music  that  greeted  her  entry.  On  her 
left  the  boy,  to  whom  so  much  publicity  was  a  torture, 
went  awkwardly  and  with  the  nervous  sadness  of  his  eyes 
intensified ;  his  gold  braid  and  his  diamonds  heightened  his 


68  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

ill-ease.  He  managed  to  give  her  the  ring  and  the  coins 
proper  to  the  ceremony,  to  kneel  and  stand  when  he  was 
told;  but  she  went  royally,  playing,  as  girl-children  so 
easily  play,  at  womanhood,  and  smiling  upon  all  around. 

The  contrast  was  gravely  apparent  when  they  passed 
together  down  the  aisle  with  the  Quete,  and  when  they  sat 
-  he  effaced,  she  triumphant  —  during  the  little  sermon 
which  the  Grand  Almoner  was  bound  to  deliver.  The  Heir 
was  not  relieved  till  the  Mass  was  over  and  the  book  was 
brought  wherein  the  signatures  of  the  witnesses  and  prin- 
cipals to  a  marriage  are  inscribed. 

It  is  natural  to  the  extreme  of  privilege  that  it  should 
affect  occasional  and  absurd  simplicities.  The  last  genera- 
tion of  Versailles  was  eager  for  such  things,  and  it  had 
become  the  custom  that  a  royal  marriage  should  be  regis- 
tered not  in  any  grand  and  parchment  manner,  but  in  the 
common  book  of  a  parish  church,  the  church  to  whose 
parish  the  palace  was  nominally  attached.  Father  Allart, 
the  rector  of  this,  in  whose  hard  and  unimportant  life  such 
days  were  set,  came  in  to  give  the  book.  The  Grand  Almoner 
set  it  before  them  and  they  signed  —  the  King  first,  with 
his  large  and  practised  name;  the  Dauphin  next  in  a  writing 
that  was  thin,  accurate  and  null.  He  passed  the  pen  to  this 
little  new  wife  of  his  who  was  to  sign  third.  At  so  practical 
a  test  her  womanhood  dropped  off  her,  her  exceedingly 
ignorant  childhood  returned.  She  got  through  the  " Marie" 
with  no  mistake  of  spelling,  but  the  letters  were  a  trifle 
uncertain  and  the  word  askew.  Why  had  not  someone 
ruled  a  line  as  lines  are  ruled  in  copy-books?  "Antoi- 
nette," the  second  word,  was  larger  and  gave  more  trouble; 
the  last  letters  fell  away  deplorably,  and  when  it  came  to 
the  third  name,  "Josepha,"  it  was  too  much  for  her 


THE  DTI  BARRY  69 

altogether.  She  did  her  best  with  the  "J"  — it  ended  in 
a  huge  blot,  and  she  became  so  flurried  that  she  spelt  her 
last  name  anyhow,  without  the  "e,"  and  let  it  go  to  pieces. 
She  was  relieved  to  give  the  pen  to  Provence,  who,  though 
he  was  yet  so  young,  wrote  his  name  strongly  like  a  man. 
Artois,  Mesdames,  the  Orleans  followed.  Each  as  they 
signed  could  see  at  the  head  of  the  page  that  deplorable 
and  dirty  scrawl  which  the  child,  whose  advent  each  of  them 
feared,  had  left  as  a  record  of  her  fifteenth  year. 

The  Court  left  the  chapel.  As  they  passed  into  the 
outer  galleries  of  the  palace  before  the  enormous  and  increas- 
ing crowd  which  thronged  the  stairways  and  the  landing- 
floors,  the  air  seemed  much  darker  than  when  they  had 
passed  in  an  hour  before.  Through  the  great  windows 
the  sky  could  be  seen  lowering  for  a  storm.  As  she  entered 
the  private  apartments  to  receive  homage  the  darkness 
increased;  the  ceremony  was  not  over  before  a  first  loud 
clap  of  thunder  startled  them;  the  rain  fell  with  violence 
upon  the  populace  that  had  crowded  the  gardens,  the 
fireworks  set  out  for  that  evening  were  drenched,  the  fine 
dresses  of  the  Paris  shop-women  were  spoiled;  all  the 
grandeur  in  front  of  the  palace  was  lost  in  umbrellas. 
It  cleared,  and  they  crushed  in,  with  their  muddy  boots 
well  scraped,  to  file  in  thousands,  a  long  procession  urged 
on  by  the  Guards,  and  passing,  behind  a  barrier,  down  the 
immense  hall,  where  the  tables  were  set  for  cards.  The  King 
and  his  Court  played  solemnly  like  actors  who  must  pre- 
tend to  see  no  audience,  sitting  thus  as  a  public  symbol  of 
the  nation. 

The  crowd  passed  thus,  company  after  company,  staring 
at  Monarchy  and  at  the  dresses  and  the  gems  till  the  West 
grew  dark,  and  the  myriads  of  candles  reflected  on  a  wall 


70  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

that  was  all  mirrors,  lent  that  evening  its  true  colours. 
When  the  last  reluctant  sight-seer  had  looked  his  last  over 
his  shoulder,  and  had  felt  the  tapestry  drop  behind  him,  the 
ceremony  ceased,  the  tables  were  cleared,  the  King  rose 
and  conducted  the  bride  to  her  room.  A  full  ceremonial  of 
etiquette  was  wearily  and  thoroughly  performed,  the  Grand 
Almoner  (once  again)  blessed  the  children's  bed,  and  that 
was  the  end  of  the  marriage. 

Outside,  the  crowd  went  back  through  the  May  night  to 
their  lodgings  or  to  Paris,  full  of  feasting,  damp,  surrounded 
by  the  fresh  air  that  follows  rain.  They  carried  with  them 
a  confused  memory  of  a  great  outing  —  music,  grandeur, 
diamonds,  innumerable  lights,  no  fireworks,  and  a  storm. 


THE  DAUPHINE 

WEDNESDAY,  I&TH  OF  MAY,  1770,  TO  TUESDAY,  lOra  OF  MAY,  1774 

WHEN  the  mock-marriage  was  over  and  the  night 
passed,  and  when,  with  the  Thursday  morning, 
the  long  routine  that  was  to  be  her  life  opened 
upon  her,  the  child  could  watch  with  less  excitement  and 
with  less  illusion  the  nature  of  that  new  world.  Her  vivacity 
was  not  diminished,  but  her  spirit  immediately  adopted 
a  permanent  attitude  of  astonished  observation  towards 
emotions  and  conventions  whose  general  scheme  she  could 
not  grasp  at  all.  Daily  the  incidents  which  passed  before 
her  while  they  violently  moved,  also  repelled  her  senses; 
she  was  reconciled  to  them  only  by  their  repetition. 

Versailles  was  the  more  bewildering  to  her  because,  in 
all  its  externals,  it  was  the  world  she  had  known  from  her 
birth.  The  French  cooking,  architecture,  dress,  and  social 
manner  had  for  a  century  imposed  themselves  upon  the 
palaces  of  Europe;  but  the  French  mind,  now  first  in  contact 
with  her  own,  remained  to  her  a  marvellous  and  unpleasing 
revelation,  which,  even  after  years  of  regarding  its  energy, 
still  shocked  her. 

There  was  a  ball  that  night.  She  danced  with  her 
bright-eyed  and  tall  young  brother-in-law;  at  what  he 
was  sneering  she  could  not  understand,  nor  even  if  the 
boy's  expression  was  a  sneer:  she  knew  that  it  was  strange. 
She  did  not  notice  the  absence  of  half  the  Court;  she  did  not 

71 


72  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

know  that  her  mother's  request  for  Precedence  to  be  given 
to  the  Princesses  of  Lorraine  had  raised  this  silent  French 
storm;  had  she  been  told  she  would  not  have  comprehended. 
The  extreme  and  individual  French  jealousies,  the  furious 
discussions  that  underlie  the  united  formality  of  French 
etiquette,  were  alien  and  inhuman  to  her  German  breeding; 
for  active  and  living,  almost  Southern,  as  was  this  Viennese 
girl,  she  enjoyed  to  the  end  the  good  simplicity  of  her  mother's 
race.  She  danced  with  young  Chartres.  If  something  in 
him  chilled  her,  she  could  not  divine  what  it  was  in  that 
character  which  even  then  seemed  closed,  and  which  later 
was  to  make  him  vote  her  husband's  death,  and  sit  at 
wine  in  his  palace  while  she  sat  a  prisoner  and  widowed  in 
her  prison  at  hand. 

For  days  the  feasts  continued  and  for  days  her  unexpected 
experiences  of  persons  and  of  a  strange  nationality  were 
relieved  by  pageants  and  popular  clamours  which,  at  her 
age,  could  distract  her  from  weary  questions.  It  was  at 
one  of  these  that  there  sounded  once  more  that  note  of 
disaster  which  came  at  rhythmic  intervals  across  her  life 
and  continued  to  come  until  a  climax  closed  it.  She  had 
leave  to  go  with  her  aunts,  the  King's  daughters,  by  night 
with  a  small  escort  to  see  the  public  holiday  in  Paris  which 
celebrated  her  marriage.  She  was  to  go  without  ceremony, 
not  to  be  recognized,  merely  to  satisfy  a  child's  curiosity 
for  a  spectacle  in  her  own  honour.  As  the  coach  came 
up  the  river  roadv  towards  what  is  now  the  Trocadero 
hill  she  could  already  see  far  off  the  flash  of  the  rockets, 
and  she  heard  with  increasing  pleasure  the  roar  of  a  great 
crowd  met  to  do  her  honour.  As  she  neared  the  great 
square  which  is  called  to-day  the  Place  de  la  Concorde 
she  was  disappointed,  as  children  are,  to  see  that  the  coach 


THE  DAUPHINE  73 

was  late;  the  great  scaffolding  and  final  set-piece  in  which 
her  initials  were  interlaced  with  those  of  the  Dauphin  was 
sputtering  out  in  the  inglorious  end  of  fireworks — but 
something  more  intimate  to  her  (had  she  known  herself) 
and  worse  than  her  childish  disappointment  had  marked 
the  moment  of  her  arrival.  The  coach  was  stopped 
abruptly,  the  guards  closed  round  it,  and  it  was  turned 
back  at  once  towards  Versailles.  As  it  rumbled  through 
the  darkness  more  quickly  than  it  had  come,  she  seemed  to 
hear  in  the  distant  clamour  both  fierceness  and  terror.  It 
was  a  sound  of  panic.  She  heard  the  news  whispered 
respectfully  and  fearfully  to  her  aunts  during  a  halt  upon  the 
way.  Perhaps  they  thought  her  too  young  to  be  told.  She 
complained  as  she  went  that  the  truth  was  concealed  from 
her,  and  when  they  reached  the  palace  late  that  night  she 
was  crying.  Next  day  the  news  was  public,  and  she  learned 
that  after  this  first  rejoicing  in  what  was  to  be  her  capital 
city,  there  had  been  crushed  and  maimed  and  killed  many 
hundreds  of  her  people;  it  proved  one  of  those  misfortunes 
which,  as  much  from  their  circumstance  as  from  their 
magnitude,  remain  fixed  for  years  in  the  memory  of  a  nation, 
and  the  day  on  which  she  learned  it  was  the  last  of  the 
month  of  her  wedding. 

During  the  summer  that  followed  this  presage  she  learnt 
the  whole  lesson  of  Versailles.  She  was  still  a  child. 
Mercy  still  wrote  of  her  to  her  mother  in  a  tone  which, 
for  all  its  conventional  respect,  was  a  tone  now  of  irritation 
against,  now  of  amused  admiration  for,  a  child.  She  had 
her  daily  childish  lessons  with  the  Abbe  Vexmond  and  daily 
exasperated  him  by  her  distractions.  She  still  wrote 
painfully  her  childish  letters  to  Maria  Theresa,  took  her 
little  childish  donkey -rides,  and  was  strongly  impressed, 


74  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

as  a  child  would  be,  by  those  of  her  elders  who  alone  could 
show  some  authority  over  her  —  Mesdames,  her  husband's 
aunts.  She  was  growing  fast;  and  there  is  nothing  more 
touching  in  the  minute  record  of  her  life  than  the  notes 
of  her  increasing  stature  during  this  year,  so  oddly  does 
the  nursery  detail  contrast  with  the  splendour  of  her  place 
in  Europe  and  the  titles  of  her  role. 

She  was  still  a  child,  but  as  her  fifteenth  birthday 
approached  and  was  passed  she  had  learnt  (while  it  wearied 
her)  the  full  etiquette  of  her  part,  and  she  had  begun, 
though  imperfectly,  to  recognise  what  were  the  politics  of 
a  Court  and  in  what  manner  intrigue  would  approach  her; 
how  to  avoid  or  master  it  she  discovered  neither  then  nor 
at  any  later  time  throughout  her  adolescence  and  maturity. 

With  the  advent  of  winter  and  its  long  and  brilliant 
festivals,  another  thing  which  she  had  begun  to  comprehend 
in  the  Palace  became  for  tyer  a  fixed  object  of  hatred;  the 
position  and  influence  of  the  Du  Barry. 

She  knew  now  what  this  official  place  was  which  the 
Favourite  held.  Her  disgust  for  such  regulation  and  pomp 
in  such  an  office  would  in  any  case  have  been  strong,  for 
Marie  Antoinette  came  from  a  Court  where  the  sovereign 
was  herself  a  woman  and  where  all  this  side  of  men's  lives 
was  left  to  the  suburbs;  that  disgust  would  in  any  case  have 
been  sharp,  for  she  was  too  young  and  too  utterly 
inexperienced  to  be  indulgent:  it  would  in  any  case  have 
been  increased  by  a  sense  of  isolation,  for  all  around  this 
German  child  were  the  French  gentry  taking  for  granted 
that  everything  touching  a  King  of  France,  from  his  vices 
to  his  foibles,  must  be  dressed  up  in  a  national  and  sym- 
bolic magnificence.  Her  disgust  would,  I  say,  in  any  case 
have  risen  against  so  much  complexity  allied  to  so  much 


THE  DAUPHINE  75 

strength,  but  that  disgust  turned  into  an  active  and  violent 
repulsion  when  she  saw  the  Du  Barry  not  only,  as  it  were, 
official  but  also  exercising  power.  This  to  her  very  young 

id  passionate  instinct,  whether  of  sex,  of  rank  or  of  policy, 
was  intolerable;  it  was  the  more  intolerable  in  that  the 
Du  Barry's  first  exercise  of  power  happened  to  go  counter 
to  interests  which  the  Dauphine  regarded  rather  too  em- 
phatically as  those  of  Austria  and  of  her  family. 

The  chief  Minister  of  the  Crown,  the  Due  de  Choiseul, 
kindly,  sceptical,  well  bred  and  rather  hollow,  had  been,  if 
not  the  mere  creation  or  discovery,  at  any  rate  the  ally  of 
Madame  de  Pompadour.  Madame  de  Pompadour  had  been 
a  statesman  herself:  Choiseul  had  perpetually  supported 
her  and  she  him,  more  especially  when  he  ran  in  the  rut  of 
the  time,  showed  himself  conventionally  anti-Christian,  and 
(having  been  educated  by  the  Jesuits)  was  drawn  into  the 
intrigue  by  which  that  order  was  suppressed,  He  had  been 
Ambassador  at  Vienna,  though  that  in  a  year  when  Marie 
Antoinette  was  a  baby,  so  that  she  had  no  early  memories 
of  his  snub-nose  and  happy,  round  face;  but  she  had  known 
his  name  all  her  life  from  the  talk  of  the  palace  in  Vienna, 
and  she  had  known  it  under  the  title  which  he  had  assumed 
just  after  her  birth.  The  Due  de  Choiseul  was  for  her,  as 
for  every  foreigner,  a  name  now  permanently  associated 
with  French  policy  and  a  Minister  who  was  identical  with 
Versailles.  Maria  Theresa  was  grateful  to  him  for  having 
permitted  the  marriage  of  her  daughter :  that  daughter  after 
some  months  of  the  French  Court  very  probably  imagined 
that  he  had  not  only  permitted  but  helped  to  design  the 
alliance.  It  was  against  this  man  that  the  Du  Barry 
stumbled. 

It  would  not  be  just  to  accuse  the  young  woman  Du  Barry 


76  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  design.  The  State  was  a  very  vague  thing  to  her.  She 
held  good  fellowship  with  many,  owed  her  advancement  to 
Choiseul's  enemies,  and  was,  in  general,  the  creature  of  the 
clique  opposed  to  him,  while  for  D'Aiguillon,  who  already 
posed  as  the  rival  of  the  elder  man,  she  felt  perhaps  a  per-' 
sonal  affection.  She  was  very  vain  and  full  of  that  domestic 
ambition  which  comes  in  floods  upon  women  of  her  sort 
when  they  attain  a  position  of  some  regularity.  She  loved 
to  feel  herself  possessed  of  what  she  had  learned  in  the  old 
days  to  call  (in  the  jargon  of  her  lovers)  "office,"  "power"; 
to  feel  that  she  could  "make"  people.  As  for  the  pleasure 
of  an  applauded  judgment,  or  the  satisfaction  of  that  appe- 
tite for  choice  which  inspires  women  of  Madame  de  Pompa- 
dour's sort  in  history,  Du  Barry  would  not  have  understood 
the  existence  of  such  an  emotion.  The  most  inept  and  the 
most  base  received  the  advantage  of  her  patronage,  not 
because  she  believed  them  capable  of  administration,  but 
simply  because  they  had  shown  least  scruple  in  receiving 
her,  or  later,  amid  the  general  coldness  of  the  Court,  had 
been  the  first  to  pay  her  an  exaggerated  respect.  As  for 
those  with  whom  she  could  recall  familiarities  in  the  past, 
she  was  willing  to  make  the  fortunes  of  them  all. 

Though  such  an  attitude  could  easily  have  been  played 
upon  by  the  courtiers  of  her  set,  it  could  never  have  supplied 
a  motive  force  for  her  demands  nor  have  nourished  the 
tenacity  with  which  she  pressed  them;  that  force  and 
that  tenacity  were  supplied  to  her  by  her  own  acute  sensitive- 
ness upon  her  new  position.  The  angry  pique  to  which  all 
her  kind  can  be  moved  in  the  day  of  their  highly  imperfect 
success  was  aflame  at  every  incident  which  recalled  to  her 
the  truth  of  her  origin  and  the  incongruity  of  her  situation: 
in  her  convulsive  desire  to  revenge  against  every  slight, 


THE  DAUPHINE  77 

real  or  imagined,  she  found  an  ally  in  the  old  King,  her 
lover.  He  also  knew  that  he  was  in  a  posture  of  humilia- 
tion, and  under  his  calm  and  tired  bearing  he  suffered 
a  continual  irritation  from  that  knowledge.  As  he  pottered 
about  his  frying-pans,  cooking  some  late  dish  to  his  liking, 
or  went  alone  and  almost  furtively  down  the  hidden  stair 
between  her  little,  low,  luxurious  rooms  and  his  own  rooms 
of  state,  his  silent  mind  was  even  less  at  ease  than  in  the 
days,  now  so  long  past,  when  an  utter  weariness  with  the 
things  of  the  flesh  and  a  despair  of  discovering  other  emo- 
tions had  first  put  into  his  eyes  the  tragedy  that  still  shines 
from  them  upon  the  walls  of  Versailles. 

All,  therefore,  that  the  Du  Barry  did,  through  Louis  XV. 
as  her  power  increased  was  notjojc  this  or  that  person  whom 
she  feared  or  loved;  it  was  ratherjagainsj;  this  or  that  person 
whose  presence  she  found  intolerable.  All  that  she  sug- 
gested, so  far  as  persons  were  concerned,  the  King  was 
ready  to  achieve. 

Had  some  married  woman  of  force  and  subtlety  formed 
the  centre  of  opposition  to  the  favourite,  the  reign  would 
have  ended  easily.    Mary  of  Saxony,  the  Dauphin's  mother^ 
had  been  such  a  woman  and  would,  had  she  lived,  have  con-\ 
ducted  affairs  to  a  decent  close.     Fate  put  in  the  place  of  I 
such  a  woman  first,  three  old  maids  —  the  King's  daughters  I 
-and  next  this  little  girl,  the  Dauphine. 

The  origins  were  slight,  but  in  its  course  the  quarrel 
gathered  impetus.  At  first  came  that  silent  great  supper- 
party  at  La  Muette  and  the  instinctive  repulsion  which  the 
child  felt  and  which  this  woman  from  the  streets  as  instinct- 
ively resented.  Next,  in  the  summer,  one  of  the  Dauphine's 
women  had  a  sharp  quarrel  with  the  favourite  in  the  stalls 
of  the  Court  theatre.  The  favourite  had  her  exiled  from 


78  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Court,  and  the  Dauphine,  crying  secretly  with  anger  in 
her  rooms,  could  obtain  no  redress.  During  the  summer 
absences  of  the  Court  in  the  country  palaces  a  perpetual 
travel  and  larger  room  to  move  prevented  an  open  battle; 
in  the  following  winter  that  very  grave  event,  the  exile  of 
Choiseul,  sealed  the  difference. 

It  was  the  error  of  Choiseul  not  that  he  had  opposed 
the  favourite's  entry  —  on  the  contrary,  he  had  thought  it 
a  useful  whim  that  would  amuse  and  occupy  his  sovereign 
—  but  that  he  could  not  take  her  seriously.  His  "world," 
his  relatives,  his  intimates,  those  whom  he  had  placed  and 
salaried  during  twelve  years  of  power,  were  outspoken  in 
their  contempt  for  the  Du  Barry.  Her  own  simple  spite 
lumped  all  together  and  made  the  Minister  the  cause  of  her 
difficulties  and  their  victim.  For  months  she  had  half 
amused,  half  frightened  Louis  by  an  increasing  insolence 
to  De  Choiseul  at  cards  and  at  table.  He  had  met  this 
insolence  at  first  with  the  ironic  courtesy  that  he  must  have 
shown  in  his  life  to  a  hundred  such  women ;  later  by  a  care- 
ful and  veiled  defence;  last  of  all  by  a  resigned  and  some- 
what dignified  expectation  of  what  he  saw  would  be  the  end. 

When  a  society  approaches  some  convulsion  the  pace 
of  change  increases  enormously  with  every  step  towards  the 
catastrophe.  "  This  at  least  no  one  dreams  of.  That 
at  least  cannot  happen!"  But  this  and  that  do  happen, 
and  at  last  all  feel  themselves  to  be  impotent  spectators  of 
a  process  so  forcible  and  swift  that  no  wisdom  can  arrest  it. 
Political  literature  in  such  moments  turns  to  mere  criticism 
and  speculation;  it  no  longer  pleads,  still  less  directs.  So 
it  is  to-day  with  more  than  one  society  of  Western  Europe; 
so  it  was  with  the  close  of  Louis  XV. 's  reign. 

In   May,   1770,   when   the  Austrian   Alliance  was   con- 


THE  DAUPHINE  79 

summated  by  the  arrival  of  Marie  Antoinette,  and  by  the 
wedding  at  Versailles,  the  revocation  of  the  one  conspicuous 
statesman  in  France  would  have  seemed  impossible.  He 
had  no  more  capacity  than  have  the  most  of  politicians,  but 
he  did  at  least  reach  that  rough  standard  demanded  in 
that  trade,  and  his  name  was  rooted  in  the  mind  of  his 
own  public  and  of  Europe.  If  the  dismissal  of  Choiseul 
had  been  proposed  in  the  summer,  there  still  remained 
enough  active  force  opposed  to  this  new  Du  Barry  woman 
to  have  prevented  the  folly;  but  at  the  rate  things  were 
going  every  month  weakened  that  force;  by  the  end  of  the 
year  it  was  too  late  to  act  in  his  defence. 

On  Christmas  Eve  fat  Hilliers  came  lurching  out  of 
the  Favourite's  room  and  brought  Choiseul  a  note  in 
Louis'  hand.  It  was  a  short  note  exiling  him  to  his 
place  at  Chauteloup  and  relieving  him  of  office. 

There  was  no  one  to  replace  the  Minister:  the  action 
was  that  of  a  common  woman  who  exercised  a  private 
vengeance  and  who  could  conceive  no  reasons  of  State.  Yet 
no  one  was  astonished  —  save  perhaps  the  child  to  whom 
so  vast  a  change  was  the  climax  of  all  that  had  bewildered 
her  since  she  had  first  spoken  to  the  French  Court. 

Maria  Theresa  and  Mercy,  her  ambassador  to  Versailles, 
had  that  knowledge  of  the  world  which  permitted  each  to 
find  footing,  even  in  such  a  welter.  Each  from  a  long  ex- 
perience knew  well  that  the  depth  of  political  life  moves 
slowly  for  all  the  violent  changes  of  machinery  or  of  names. 
Each  felt  the  Alliance  —  the  object  of  all  their  solitude  —  to 
be  still  standing  in  spite  of  Choiseul's  fall ;  and  each  divined 
that  their  little  Princess,  who  was  the  pledge  of  that  alli- 
ance at  the  French  Court,  and  whom  they  destined,  when 
she  was  Queen,  to  be  its  perpetuator,  might  at  this  moment 


80  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

weaken  and  ruin  it :  her  probable  indiscretion  and  her  sim- 
plicity were  the  points  of  danger.  Her  plain  spoken  anger 
might  ruin  their  plans  for  a  recovery  of  Austrian  influence. 
Each,  therefore,  concentrated  upon  a  special  effort  —  Mercy, 
by  repeated  visits  from  the  Austrian  Embassy  in  Paris  to 
the  court  at  Versailles  and  by  repeated  admonitions;  Maria 
Theresa  (in  whom  the  fear  for  her  daughter's  future  and 
position  was  even  greater  than  her  solicitude  for  the 
Austrian  policy)  by  repeated  letters,  too  insistent  perhaps 
and  too  personal  wholly  to  effect  their  object. 
I  Marie  Antoinette  was  persuaded  to  a  certain  restraint, 
I  but  she  was  neither  convinced  nor  instructed.  She  saw 
the  whole  situation  as  a  girl  would  see  it,  in  black  and  white : 
Madame  du  Barry  Was  of  the  gutter,  and  had  yet  been 
able  to  destroy  a  name  which  she  had  always  heard  associated 
with  the  fortunes  of  her  own  family  and  the  dignity  of  the 
French  Crown.  The  complexity  of  the  situation,  the  short 
years  it  was  likely  to  last,  the  necessity  during  those  years  of 
weighing  the  intricate  and  changing  attachments  of  the  grea?t 
families  in  their  interlacing  groups  —  all  this  escaped  her. 

So  little  did  she  see  the  intricate  pattern  of  politics  that, 
when  Louis  XV.,  less  than  two  months  later,  ^gxiled  the 
higher  courts  of  law  and  all  but  roused  a  rebellion,  she  did 
not  connect  with  the  reign  of  her  qnemy  this  act  of  violence 
which  isolated  and  imperilled  the  Crown^Jshe  thought  it 
royal,  immediate,  and  just,  still  seeing  mere  kingship  as 
children  see  it  in  a  fairy  tale,  beneficent  and  paternal. 

The  six  months  of  administrative  anarchy  that  followed 
meant  nothing  to  her.  When,  in  July,  D'Aiguillon  —  inept, 
a  mere  servitor  of  the  Favourite's  —  was  at  last  appointed 
to  the  vacant  post  of  Prime  Minister,  this  act  —  in  its  way 
more  astounding  than  the  dismissal  of  Choiseul  —  was 


' 


THE  DAUPHINE  81 

only  remarkable  to  her  because  it  was  the  Du  Barry's 
doing.  And  during  the  whole  of  her  sixteenth  year  she  re- 
presented at  Court  a  fixed  indignation  which,  in  her  alone, 
steadily  increased  as  the  powers  of  the  Favourite  became 
absolute;  for  as  Marie  Antoinette  approached  woman- 
hood she  developed  a  quality  of  resistance  which  was  the 
one  element  of  strength  of  her  early  character,  but  from 
which  was  fatally  absent  any  power  to  design.  That  obsti- 
nate power  of  resistance  was  to  raise  around  her  multiplying 
and  enduring  enmities ;  it  was  to  mature  her  in  her  first 
severe  trials,  but  it  was  also  to  bring  her  to  the  tragedy 
which  has  lent  her  name  enduring  and  exaggerated  nobility. 

This  opposition  which  the  Dauphine  offered  to  Madame 
du  Barry,  an  opposition  which  did  but  rise  as  that  woman 
(during  1771)  opened,  one  after  the  other,  all  the  avenues 
of  power  to  her  lowest  or  least  capable  courtiers,  took  on 
no  form  of  violence. 

Marie  Antoinette,  as  the  pale  auburn  of  her  hair  and  her 
thick  eyebrows  darkened,  as  her  frame  strengthened  and 
her  voice  took  on  a  fuller  tone,  added  to  the  vivacity  of  her 
childhood  a  new  note  of  passionate  emphasis  which  was 
ill-suited  to  her  part,  and  which  in  any  circumstances  but 
those  of  luxury  would  have  approached  vulgarity.  In 
many  mino^r  matters  she  forebore  to  put  the  least  restraint 
upon  a  momentary  annoyance;  she  would  have  some 
design  she  disapproved  destroyed;  a  bookcase,  though  it 
was  Gabriel's,  she  had  broken  before  her  eyes,  to  appease 
her  discontent.  But  in  the  major  matter  of  this  quarrel 
she  put  on  a  sort  of  solemnity,  and  her  resistance  took  the 
simple  but  unconquerable  form  of  silence.  She  would  not 
recognise  the  Favourite,  though  she  were  to  meet  her  five 
Ijpes  a  day,  and  she  would  not  address  one  word  to  her. 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

That  silence,  which  kept  open  at  Court  a  sharp  wound 
and  which  stood  a  permanent  and  a  most  powerful  menace 
to  all  that  had  power  at  Versailles,  became  for  Mesdames, 
the  King's  daughters  (who  had  first  given  this  example),  and 
for  all  the  defeated  parties  a  welcome  symbol — though  for  the 
Princess  herself  it  was  a  most  perilous  one.  To  break  that 
silence  was  the  effort  of  every  converging  force  about  her. 
I  Her  mother  in  repeated  warnings ;  Mercy,  the  King,  and  most 
lof  all  the  Favourite  herself,  came  to  think  it  a  first  point  of 
policy  that  what  might  have  been  pardoned  in  the  child 
should  not  remain  a  cause  of  acute  offence  in  the  woman. 
She  was  now  nearly  eighteen  months  at  Versailles ;  she  had 
entered  her  seventeenth  year.  But  whenever  the  Du  Barry 
crossed  her  in  the  receptions  or  met  her  eyes  at  table,  what- 
ever beginnings  of  a  salute  may  have  escaped  the  loose 
manner  of  the  Favourite,  she  suffered  the  mortification 
of  a  complete  refusal.  The  feminine  comedy  was  admirably 
played,  and  for  the  Dauphine  the  King's  mistress  remained 
a  picture  or  an  empty  chair  —  sometimes  to  be  blankly 
gazed  at  —  never  to  be  recognised  or  addressed. 

There  was  indeed  a  moment  in  August  when  the 
Dauphine's  resolution  wavered.  Mercy  had  visited  the  Du 
Barry;  he  had  spoken  to  her  intimately  and  with  gallantry. 
He  ha'd  probably  promised  her  the  graces  of  the  Dauphine ; 
he  returned  to  Marie  Antoinette  to  press  his  advice.  So 
pressed  she  promised  her  mother's  ambassador  that  she 
would  speak,  but  when  the  moment  came  and  the  meeting 
had  been  carefully  arranged,  after  cards  at  evening,  she 
remembered  too  much:  she  remembered  perhaps  most 
keenly  a  recent  thing,  the  choice  of  ^~  this  woman's 

friends,  in  spite  of  her  protests,  for  ••  ladies  in 

waiting.  She  strolled  to  the  table  where  and  the 


THE  DAUPHINE  83 

Favourite  were  talking  together.  As  she  came  up  Madame 
du  Barry  put  on  an  air  of  expectation  which  invited  her 
approach.  The  girl  hesitated  and  turned  back.  A  scene 
not  consonant  to  that  society  was  avoided  only  by  Madame 
Adelaide,  who  had  the  presence  of  mind  to  summon  her 
niece  at  the  critical  moment  of  the  insult ;  but  the  fiasco  led 
to  further  and  more  peremptory  orders  from  her  mother,  to 
a  long  and  troubled  interview  between  Mercy  and  the  King, 
and  at  last  to  the  conclusion  at  which  they  all  desired.  The 
Dauphine  recognised  the  Du  Barry;  but  the  recognition 
came  in  a  manner  so  characteristic  of  Marie  Antoinette  that 
it  would  have  been  better  for  her  and  for  them  if  they  had 
not  won  their  battle. 

Upon  the  New  Year's  Day  of  1772  at  Versailles,  on  which 
day  it  was  agreed  (and  this  time  most  solemnly  vowed)  that 
a  greeting  should  be  given,  and  during  the  formal  reception 
held  at  Court  that  day,  there  came  a  moment  when  in  an 
uneasy  silence,  the  moving  crowd  of  the  Court  saw  the 
Dauphine  approach  the  Favourite,  pass  before  her,  and 
say  as  she  parsed  —  not  so  directly  nor  so  loudly  as  might 
be  wished,  but  still  so  that  the  Du  Barry  might  have  taken 
the  words  as  addressed  to  herself:  "There  are  very  many 
people  at  Versailles  to-day."  Before  a  reply  could  be 
given  her  she  had  passed  on.  Next  day  she  said  to  Mercy: 
"I  shall  not  let  that  woman  hear  the  sound  of  my  voice 
again." 

The  moment  of  time  during  which  this  quarrel  reached 
its  height  was  one  of  extreme  anxiety  to  Maria  Theresa, 
and  indeed  to  all.  It  was  that  during  which  the  first 
public  renunciation  of  the  international  morality  which 
had  hitherto  ruled  in  Christendom  was  in  negotiation  at 
the  instance  of  Prussia.  It  was  secretly  proposed  that 


84  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

an  European  government  should  be  disregarded  without 
treaty  and  subjected  to  mere  force  without  the  sanction 
of  our  general  civilisation.  Frederick  had  suggested  to 
Russia  long  before  with  deference,  recently  to  Catholic 
Austria  with  a  sneer,  the  partition  of  Poland. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  more  deplorable  forms  of 
insurgence  against  civilised  morals  that  they  originate 
either  in  a  race  permanently  alien  to  (though  present  in) 
the  unity  of  the  Roman  Empire,  or  in  those  barbaric  prov- 
inces which  Were  admitted  to  the  European  scheme  after 
the  fall  of  Rome,  and  which  for  the  most  part  enjoyed  but 
a  brief  and  precarious  vision  of  the  Faith  between  their 
tardy  conversion  and  the  schism  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Prussia  was  of  this  latter  kind,  and  with  Prussia,  Frederick. 
To-day  his  successors  and  their  advisers,  when  they  attempt 
to  justify  the  man,  are  compelled  still  to  ignore  the  European 
tradition  of  honour.  But  this  crime  of  his,  the  partition  of 
Poland,  the  germ  of  all  that  international  distrust  which 
has  ended  in  the  intolerable  armed  strain  of  our  time,  has 
another  character  attached  to  it :  a  character  which  attaches 
invariably  to  ill-doing  when  that  ill-doing  is  also  uncivilised. 
It  was  a  folly.  The  same  folly  attached  to  it  as  has  attached 
to  every  revolt  against  the  historic  conscience  of  Europe: 
such  blindnesses  can  only  destroy;  they  possess  no  per- 
manent creative  spirit,  and  the  partition  of  Poland  has 
remained  a  peculiar  and  increasing  curse  to  its  promoters 
in  Prussia;  to  their  mere  accomplices  in  St.  Petersburg  it 
has  caused  and  is  causing  less  weakness  and  peril;  while 
it  has  left  but  a  slight  inheritance  of  suffering  to  the 
Hapsburgs,  whose  chief  was  at  the  moment  of  the  crimes 
but  a  most  reluctant  party  to  it. 

There  is  not  in  Christian  history,  though  it  abounds  in 


THE  DAUPHINE  85 

coincidence  or  design,  a  more  striking  example  of  sin  suitably 
rewarded  than  the  menace  which  is  presented  to  the 
Hohenzollerns  to-day  by  the  Polish  race.  Not  even  their 
hereditary  disease,  which  has  reached  its  climax  in  the 
present  generation,  has  proved  so  sure  a  chastisement  to 
the  lineage  of  Frederick  as  have  proved  the  descendants  of 
those  whose  country  he  destroyed.  An  economic  accident 
has  scattered  them  throughout  the  dominions  of  the  Prussian 
dynasty;  they  are  a  source  everywhere  of  increasing  danger 
and  ill-will.  They  grow  largely  in  representative  power. 
They  compel  the  government  to  abominable  barbarities 
which  are  already  arousing  the  mind  of  Europe.  They 
will  in  the  near  future  prove  the  ruin  of  that  family  to  which 
was  originally  due  the  partition  of  Poland. 

Enormous  as  was  the  event,  however,  both  in  its  quality 
of  evil  and  in  its  consequences  to  mankind,  it  must  not  detain 
/the  reader  of  these  pages.  Its  interest  here  lies  only  "W  Yi 

first    and    principal    example   which    it    affords    of         .  , 

Tiaicls 
Antoinette's  direct  and  therefore  unpolitical  temper.     ». 

was  indeed  only  upon  the  verge  of  womanhood  —  she  hau 
but  completed  her  sixteenth  year,  but  her  failure  to  under- 
stand the  critical,  and,  above  all,  the  complex  necessities  of 
the  Hapsburgs  at  that  moment  was  characteristic  of  all  the 
further  miscalculations  that  were  to  mark  her  continual 
interference  with  diplomacy  for  twenty  years.  It  was 
imperative  that  ^ustrja^should  find/ support  in  the  grave 
issue  to  which  Maria  Theresa  had  been  compelled  against 
her  conscience  and  her  reason.  Berlin  and  St.  Petersburg 
suddenly  having  agreed  to  a  material  aggrandisement,  help 
was  imperative,  and  help  could  only  come  from  her  ally  at 
Versailles*  Upon  this  one  occasion,  if  upon  no  other,  the 
young  daughter  of  the  Empress  was  justified  in  working  for 


86  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

her  family,  and  that  could  only  be  done  through  the  woman 
whose  influence  was  now  the  one  avenue  of  approach  to 
Louis  XV.  A  recognition  of  the  Du  Barry  was  essential  to 
Vienna  in  that  new  year  of  1772.  The  Dauphine  made  it, 
but  she  made  it  in  such  a  way  that  it  was  a  worse  insult 
even  than  had  been  her  former  silence.  Had  war  broken 
out  that  spring,  at  the  melting  of  the  snow,  it  is  possible  or 
probable  that  Versailles  would  not  have  supported  Vienna 
against  Prussia  and  Russia  in  arms. 

There  was  almost  a  quarrel  between  the  growing  girl  and 
the  Empress,  her  mother.  To  that  mother  she  still  remained 
the  child  who  had  left  Vienna  two  years  before;  but  then, 
in  Versailles  and  to  those  who  saw  her,  this  year  made  her 
a  woman. 

That  she  had  passed  the  boundary  of  adolescence  was 
Apparent  in  many  ways.  She  was  more  and  more  enfran- 
tradif.d  from  the  influence  of  elder  women  —  notably  of  her 
aunts,  her  intimacy  with  whom  faded  through- 
1772  and  disappeared  in  1773.  Her  step  had  acquired 
that  firm  and  rather  conscious  poise  which  was  to  distinguish 
her  throughout  her  life.  The  growth  of  her  stature  was 
now  accomplished,  and  she  was  tall,  and  though  her  shoul- 
ders had  not  the  grace  and  amplitude  which  they  later 
assumed,  her  figure  had,  in  general,  achieved  maturity.  Her 
hair,  now  a  trifle  darker  and  browner  in  its  red,  her  eye- 
brows, always  pronounced  but  now  thicker  and  more 
prominent,  announced  the  same  change.  Her  motives  also, 
though  insufficient  in  judgment,  were  deeper  in  origin.  Her 
resistance  to  her  mother's  and  to  Mercy's  most  pressing 
insistence  in  the  matter  of  the  Favourite  was  a  resistance 
no  longer  even  partially  suggested  to  her  by  others ;  it  was  due 
now  to  a  full  comprehension  of  the  old  King's  degradation, 


THE  DAUPHINE  87 

and  to  a  formed  abhorrence  of  the  Du  Barry.  Moreover, 
when  she  yielded  for  a  moment  —  as  she  did  perhaps 
three  times  in  the  course  of  two  years  --it  was  with  some 
measure  of  thought:  she  consented  to  approach  the  King's 
mistress  at  moments  when  the  ambassador  or  her  mother 
had  convinced  her  by  speech  or  letter  of  an  acute  necessity ; 
but  already,  in  her  excuses  when  she  refused,  she  began  to 
use  the  argument  of  a  woman,  not  of  a  child  —  she  pleaded 
"the  authority  of  her  husband":  it  was  a  phrase  in  which 
she,  least  of  all,  put  faith. 

With  this  advent  of  womanhood  there  came,  of  necessity 
to  a  character  so  ardent,  fixed  enmities.  She  was  no  longer  I 
despised  as  a  child;  she  was  hated  as  an  adult.  Mesdames,! 
the  King's  daughters,  whose  influence  over  her  had  dis- 
appeared, joined,  in  their  disappointment,  the  over-large 
group  of  her  detractors.  The  fatal  name  of  "Autrichienne," 
the  foreign  label  that  clung  to  her  at  the  scaffold, 
originated  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  the  three  old  maids, 
and  all  around  her,  as  her  power  to  order  or  to  fascinate 
increased,  there  increased  also  new  hatreds  which  attained 
to  permanence,  because  her  German  memories,  her  eager 
action,  her  crude  and  single  aspect  of  the  multitudinous 
and  subtle  French  character,  her  rapid  turning  from  this 
pleasure  to  that,  her  ignorance  of  books  and  of  things,  lent 
her  no  power  to  wear  those  courtiers  down  or  to  play  a 
skilful  game  against  them. 

Forgetfulness  was  easy  to  her.  To  help  her  to  forget 
she  had  the  intoxication  of  that  moment  which  comes  once 
in  life  and  in  the  powerful  blossoming  of  our  humanity.  Her 
eighteenth  year,  the  last  year  before  she  ascended  the 
throne,  was  the  great  moment  of  her  youth. 

She  had  not  been  beautiful  as  a  child,  she  was  not  destined 


88  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

to  real  beauty  in  her  womanhood ;  but  at  this  moment,  with 
the  spring  of  1773  and  on  to  that  of  1774,  there  radiated 
from  her  the  irresistible  appeal  of  youth. 

Paris,  which  had  learnt  to  despise  and  half  to  hate  the 
Crown,  which  had  felt  itself  widowed  and  abandoned  by 
the  emigration  of  the  Bourbons  to  Versailles,  caught  her 
charm  for  a  day.  When  she  made  with  the  Dauphin  her 
first  official  entry  into  the  city,  great  crowds  acclaimed  her 
perpetually;  she  had  that  emotion,  so  dear  to  Women  that 
it  will  drive  them  on  to  the  stage  itself,  of  a  public  applause 
directed  toward  their  persons :  the  general  applause  of  Paris 
was  almost  an  applause  of  lovers.  For  just  these  passing 
hours  on  a  sweet  day  in  early  June  she  saw  and  loved  the 
city  wherein  her  doom  was  written  upon  every  stone,  and 
for  these  hours  the  Tuilleries  which  she  inhabited  were  faery 
and  so  full  of  delight  that  she  could  not  tell  whether  the  air 
Was  magical  or  owed  its  fragrance  only  to  the  early  flowers. 

In  such  a  mood,  daily  drinking  in  happiness  and  a  certain 
sense  of  power,  admired  almost  openly  by  distant  men  and 
-very  likely  --by  Artois,  her  young  brother-in-law,  who 
had  known  her  all  these  years,  she  passed  the  high  tide  of 
the  summer  and  autumn,  and  found  in  the  ensuing  winter 
for  the  first  time  that  lively  and  absorbing  interest  in  social 
pleasure  which  very  largely  determined  her  life. 

Of  the  balls  in  which  she  danced,  of  the  masked  balls  that 
were  her  special  delight,  one  stands  out  in  history  —  and 
stood  out  in  her  own  memories,  even  to  her  last  hour,  a  night 
unlike  all  others. 


The  reader  has  divined  that  the  marriage  of  May  1770 
had  been  no  marriage.     It  was  contracted  between  children ; 


THE  DAUPHINE  89 

and  years  must  pass — years  which  were  those  of  the 
school-room  for  both  of  them  — before  Maria  Theresa  could 
expect  an  heir  with  Hapsburg  blood  for  the  French  throne. 
But  the  years  passed;  the  child  was  now  a  woman,  and 
still  the  marriage  remained  a  form. 

From  an  accident  to  which  I  will  return  in  its  propern 
place,  the  Dauphin  and  herself  were  not  wife  and  husband  j  1 
and  to  this  grave  historical  fact  must  largely  be  attributed ' 
the  fliga.sfr.prsjjifli^wprp>  fro  follow  For  the  moment,  how- 
ever, this  misfortune  did  little  but  accentuate  her  isolation 
and  perhaps  her  pride.  In  her  childish  advent  to  the 
Court  it  could  mean  nothing  to  her.  Lately  she  had 
understood  a  little  more  clearly;  but  she  was  pure;  her 
training  was  in  admirable  conformity  to  her  faith.  She  was 
not  yet  troubled  —  until  the  opening  of  that  last  year,  '74, 
with  its  gaiety  and  pride.  This  season  of  vigour,  radiance 
and  youth  lacked  the  emotion  which  has  been  so  wisely  and 
so  justly  fitted  by  God  to  that  one  moment  through  which 
we  make  our  entry  into  a  full  life.  She  was  married  to  the 
heir  of  France:  her  virtue  and  her  pride  forbade  her  to  be 
loved.  Yet  she  was  also  not  married  to  that  heir,  and  her 
life  now  lacked,  and  continued  to  lack,  not  only  love  but 
the  ardent  regard  that  was  her  due. 

No  Frenchman  could  have  turned  her  gaze.  Between 
her  temperament  and  that  of  her  husband's  nation  the 
gulf  was  far  too  deep.  But  one  night,  late,  as  she  moved, 
masked  in  her  domino,  through  the  crowd  of  a  Paris  ball- 
room, she  saw  among  so  many  faces  whose  surface  only 
was  revealed  to  her  another  face  of  another  kind,  a  boy's. 
It  arrested  her.  The  simple  and  sincere  expression  which 
Versailles  had  never  shown  her,  the  quiet  manliness  which, 
in  Northerners,  is  so  often  allied  to  courage  and  which  stands 


90  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

in  such  contrast  to  the  active  virility  of  Gaul  —  all  that 
which,  in  the  secret  places  of  her  German  heart,  unknown 
to  herself,  she  thought  proper  to  a  man,  all  that  whose  lack 
(though  she  could  not  analyze  it)  had  disturbed  and  wounded 
her  in  the  French  palace,  Was  apparent  in  the  face  before 
her.  She  asked  his  name  and  heard  that  it  was  Fersen. 
He  was  a  Swede,  the  son  of  a  considerable  political  noble, 
sent  here  on  his  travels  with  a  tutor.  She  went  up  and 
spoke  to  him. 

She  could  look  into  his  eyes  and  see  their  chivalry.  His 
low,  handsome  forehead,  his  dark  brows,  his  refined,  firm 
lips,  his  large  and  gentle  eyes,  completed  in  detail  the  pro- 
found impression  with  which  that  first  glance  had  struck 
her.  Once  she  had  begun  to  speak  to  him,  so  masked,  she 
continued  to  speak  continually.  A  boy  of  eighteen  is  far 
younger  than  a  girl  of  his  age  —  they  were  born  within  six 
weeks  of  each  other,  and  he  was  a  child  compared  with 
her;  he  desired  her,  she  consenting,  and  he  became  hers 
in  that  moment.  When  they  had  separated  and  he  reached 
his  rooms  at  morning  there  was  ready  in  his  heart  what 
later  he  wrote  down,  that  the  Dauphine  was  delightful,  and 
that  she  was  the  most  charming  princess  he  ever  had 
known.  She  upon  her  side  had  followed  him  with  her  eyes 
to  the  door  of  the  great  assembly.  She  Was  not  to  see  him 
again  for  four  years,  but  during  all  those  years  she  remem- 
bered him. 


This  was  the  way  in  which  Marie  Antoinette  entered 
life,  and  almost  simultaneously  with  that  entry  came  her 
ascent  of  the  throne:  the  old  King  was  changing.  t 

He  suffered.     His   digestion  failed;  from  time  to  time 


THE  DAUPHINE  91 

he  would  abandon  his  hunting.  It  was  in  the  January  of 
1774  that  the  Dauphine  had  met  Axel  de  Fersen.  Before 
the  spring  of  that  year  Louis  XV. 's  increasing  infirmities 
were  to  reach  their  end. 

Gusts  of  strong  faith  swept  over  him  in  these  failing  years, 
as  strong  winds  filled  with  a  memory  of  autumn,  will  sweep 
the  dead  reeds  of  December.  His  fear  of  death,  and  that 
hunger  for  the  Sacraments  which  accompanies  the  fear, 
came  to  him  in  dreadful  moments.  For  thirty-eight  years 
he  had  neither  communicated  nor  confessed.  All  his  life 
he  had  avoided  the  terrace  of  St.  Germain's,  because  a 
little  lump  far  off  against  the  eastern  sky  was  St.  Denis, 
the  mausoleum  of  the  kings,  and  he  had  not  dared  to  look 
on  it.  But,  with  no  such  memorial  before  him,  death  now 
appeared  and  reappeared. 

Once  in  his  little  private  room  —  it  was  late  at  night 
and  November  —  he  played  at  cards  with  the  Du  Barry. 
They  were  alone,  save  for  an  old  crony  of  his  pleasures, 
Chauvelin,  which  well-bred  and  aged  fellow  stood  behind 
the  woman's  chair,  leaning  upon  it  and  watching  the 
woman's  cards  in  silence,  his  rapacious  features  strongly 
marked  in  the  mellow  light  of  the  candles.  Something 
impelled  the  woman  to  glance  up  at  him  over  her  shoulder. 
"Oh,  Lord!  M.  de  Chauvelin,  what  a  face!"  It  was  the 
face  of  a  dead  man.  She  leapt  and  started  from  it,  and 
the  body  fell  to  the  floor. 

The  King,  his  age  and  apathy  all  shaken  from  him, 

shouted  down  the  empty  corridors:  "A  priest!  a  priest!" 

•  They  came,  and  in  the  presence  of  the  King  absolved  what 

lay  immovable  upon  the  shining  floor,  in  a  hope  or  wish 

4:hat  some  life  lingered  there.     But  Chauvelin  was  quite 


92  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Now,  in  his  last  Easter,  the  dread  came  back  for  ever  and 
inhabited  the  King.  Upon  the  Maundy  Thursday  of  '74 
(it  was  the  last  day  of  March)  the  Court  were  all  at  Mass, 
and  the  sermon  was  ending.  The  priest,  strong  in  that 
tradition  of  Bossuet  which  had  not  perished,  turned  to  the 
royal  chair  and  related  for  his  peroration  the  legend  of  an 
ancient  curse:  "Forty  days,  and  Nineveh  shall  be  no  more." 
All  the  Court  heard  it  and  forgot  it  before  the  chanting  of 
the  creed  was  done  —  but  the  King  was  troubled.  He 
reckoned  in  his  mind;  he  counted  dates  and  was  troubled. 

The  liturgical  times  went  by;  he  abandoned  his  mistress; 
he  lived  apart  and  gloomy:  but  his  Easter  duties  were  not 
accomplished,  nor  did  he  communicate  or  confess,  nor  was 
he  absolved.  Then  the  cloud  lifted  and  he  began  to  forget, 
and  the  tie  which  held  him  to  the  Du  Barry  and  which 
had  in  it  now  something  of  maturity  and  routine,  was  very 
strong  upon  him.  He  yielded  and  returned  to  her  where 
she  waited  for  him  down  the  park  at  the  little  Trianon. 
His  domesticity  returned  —  but  not  for  long. 

It  was  upon  Tuesday  the  twenty-sixth  of  April  that  he 
came  in  from  hunting  changed.  He  would  not  eat.  He 
wondered  a  little  and  was  cherished  by  his  companion,  but 
his  fever  grew.  Next  day  he  woke  to  suffering.  He 
attempted  to  hunt,  but  his  knees  were  weakened  and  he 
could  not  ride  his  horse;  and  coming  back  to  Trianon,  he 
groaned  with  his  head  in  torment.  His  dread  increased;  but 
his  doctors,  who  had  been  long  familiar  with  his  moody 
interludes,  thought  little  of  the  thing.  They  carried  him 
back  through  the  trees  to  the  palace,  to  his  own  room  in 
the  Northern  wing,  and  that  day  and  the  next,  as  the  fever 
grew,  rumours  went  louder  and  louder  in  the  palace.  On 
the  Friday,  at  eventide,  as  a  candle  chanced  near  the  face 


THE  DATJPHINE  93 

of  the  sick  man,  the  doctor  looked  closer;  and  in  the  next 
hour,  before  midnight,  the  Princess  Clothilde,  talking  in 
Madame  de  Marin's  room  in  whispers  to  the  Duke  of  Crois, 
opened  a  note  from  the  Dauphine.  She  cried  aloud: 
"They  say  it  is  the  small-pox!" 

They  dared  not  tell  him.  He  had  the  assurance  to 
demand  the  truth,  and  when  he  heard  it  he  said:  "At 
my  age  a  man  does  not  recover."  He  maintained  from 
that  moment,  through  the  increasing  torment  and  dis- 
figurement of  his  disease,  a  complete  mastery  over  himself 
and  even  to  some  extent  the  power  of  ordering  the  Court. 
He  saw  to  it  that  his  grandson,  the  Dauphin,  should  not  come 
near  his  room,  for  of  all  the  royal  families  in  Europe  the 
French  Bourbons  alone  had  not  been  vaccinated.  He 
accepted  the  services  of  his  daughters. 

One  thing  alone  he  hesitated  on,  and  that  was  to  relin- 
quish the  society  of  his  Favourite. 

He  was  too  proud  and  too  silent  a  man  for  his  contempo- 
raries or  for  ourselves  to  knowtEeTull  cause  of  his  hesitation. 
Passion  at  that  moment  it  could  not  have  been.  The 
possibility  of  his  survival  he  had  himself  denied,  and  his 
every  phrase  and  act  showed  how  clearly  he  felt  the  approach 
of  death.  He  himself  had  drawn  the  secret  of  his  malady 
from  the  reluctant  Cardinal  whose  duty  it  was,  as  Grand 
Almoner,  first  to  inform  him  of  his  danger,  but  whose  worldly 
fear  of  consequence  had  kept  him  from  speaking  —  though 
he  was  urged  to  his  duty  by  every  prelate  at  Court.  The 
King  was  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the  soul,  nor  as  to 
the  scandal  which,  under  the  special  conditions  of  his 
throne,  his  one  great  frailty  had  given.  He  knew  the 
Church;  he  could  not,  as  might  a  philosopher,  take  refuge 
in  the  memory  of  good  deeds  to  outweigh  the  evil,  or  (as 


94  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

might  a  monarch  of  a  different  civilisation)  in  the  deep 
hypocrisies  which  there  shield  birth  and  wealth  from  self- 
knowledge.  His  Christian  faith  was  strong  and  clean. 
Yet  he  hesitated.  If  he  still  clung  to  the  Du  Barry,  it 
Was  perhaps,  because  nothing  was  left  him  in  the  visible 
world  but  the  gaiety  and  the  assiduous  care  which  had 
endeared  this  woman  to  him. 

She  kept  near  him  throughout  the  first  hours  of  his  malady, 
and  every  evening,  when  the  princesses  had  left  their  father's 
room,  she  would  come  in  by  a  private  further  door  and 
sit  beside  the  little  camp  bed  on  which  he  lay.  She  over- 
came all  repugnance;  she  soothed  his  pustuled  forehead 
with  her  hand.  He  felt,  perhaps,  as  though  to  abandon  her 
was  a  first  breaking  with  life. 

The  aged  Archbishop  of  Paris,  himself  suffering  griev- 
ously from  the  stone,  bore,  not  without  groaning,  the  jolting 
journey  to  Versailles;  he  came  to  undertake  himself  what 
the  Grand  Almoner  dared  not  do  —  to  demand  the  dismissal 
of  the  Favourite.  He  was  not  allowed  into  the  King's 
room.  The  group  of  courtiers  continually  present  in  the 
outer  chamber,  the  (Eil  de  Bceuf,  could  watch  with  much 
amusement  the  gestures  of  command  and  of  refusal  that 
passed  between  the  Archbishop  and  the  Duke  of  Richelieu 
in  the  antechamber  beyond.  At  last  he  was  admitted,  but 
it  was  arranged  that  others  should  be  present,  and  nothing 
passed  between  him  and  the  King  save  a  word  of  con- 
dolence from  each  for  the  other's  suffering. 

It  was  by  no  stimulation  from  without  but  by  his  own  act 
that  the  King  took  the  last  step  in  his  penance.  Upon 
Tuesday  the  third  of  May,  towards  midnight,  Madarn,e 
du  Barry  being  with  him,  as  was  her  custom,  to  tend  him 
through  the  night,  he  said  to  her,  in  those  brief  sentences 


THE  DAUPHINE  95 

of  his  which  had  for  years  forbidden  discussion  or  reply, 
that  he  must  prepare  for  his  end  and  that  she  must  leave 
him;  he  told  her  that  a  refuge  was  prepared,  and  that  she 
should  want  for  nothing.  She  stumbled  half  fainting  from 
the  room  to  the  Minister  whose  career  she  had  made,  the 
Duke  of  Aiguillon,  believing  with  justice  that  he  was  not 
ungrateful,  and  in  his  rooms  she  cried  and  lamented  through 
what  remained  of  darkness. 

With  the  morning  the  King  gave  D'Aiguillon  his  orders, 
and  that  afternoon  the  Duke,  worthily  loyal  although  his 
career  was  ended,  sent  his  own  wife  to  take  her  in  a  hired 
carriage,  without  circumstance  and  therefore  without  dis- 
grace, to  their  country  house  some  miles  away.  It  was  the 
thirty-fourth  of  the  forty  days. 

That  evening  the  King  asked  Laborde,  his  valet,  for 
Madame  du  Barry.  The  servant  answered  that  she  was 
gone.  "Already?"  he  sighed,  and  her  name  was  not 
heard  again. 

Thursday  and  Friday  passed :  the  first  with  a  rally  which 
the  more  foolish  hoped  would  save  the  life  of  the  King; 
the  second  with  the  disappointment  of  all  that  corrupt  and 
intriguing  clique  which  depended  upon  his  recovery. 

Meanwhile  the  Dauphine  kept  her  rooms.  She  knew 
what  desperate  court  would  be  pressed  upon  her  husband 
and  herself  were  the  doors  to  be  opened;  nor  did  the 
Dauphin  give  a  single  order  of  the  hundred  that  were 
already^solicited  of  him,  save  that  all  should  be  ready  for 
the  whole  Court  to  leave  for  Choisy.  Early  upon  the  morn- 
ing of  Saturday  this  seclusion  was  broken :  long  before  the 
common  hour  of  the  palace,  at  half-past  five,  a  roll  of  drums 
awakened  its  people,  and  the  princess  came  down  with  all 
her  ladies  to  see  the  Sacrament  carried  through  Versailles. 


96  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Between  a  double  row  of  the  guard,  under  the  great 
canopy  that  was  reserved  for  such  solemnities,  the  priests 
carried  the  Viaticum,  and  about  It  in  a  long  procession 
as  It  passed,  were  the  torches  and  the  candles.  She  stood 
with  her  sister-in-law  at  the  head  of  the  crowd  in  the  great 
hall  outside  the  bedroom  door;  she  endured  the  stench 
of  corruption  that  filled  the  air,  though  every  window  was 
open  to  the  morning;  she  caught,  by  her  tall  stature  and 
straight  carriage,  the  scene  that  was  acting  within. 

Between  the  purple  robes  and  the  surplices,  in  the  ring 
of  Waxen  lights,  she  saw  the  old  man,  whom  alone  she  had 
respected  and  indeed  loved  in  her  new  home,  attempt 
to  raise  himself,  calling:  "My  great  God  has  come  to  me. 
My  great  God!"  She  saw  him  with  what 
strength  he  had  plucking  the  cotton  cap  from  his  head  and 
failing  in  his  effort  to  kneel.  His  face  was  no  longer  the 
face  she  had  known,  but  crusted  dark  and  hideous,  swollen, 
horrible.  She  heard  the  Grand  Almoner  repeat  the  King's 
strong  phrase  of  repentance,  passionately  solemn,  and  she 
knew  the  voice  so  well  that  perhaps  she  also  heard  the 
mumble  in  which  he  urged  its  repetition.  Then  the  doors 
closed;  the  Court  dispersed.  She  regained  her  apartments 
and  the  isolation  and  the  strain  returned.  They  told  her 
of  his  increasing  delirium,  of  the  crowds  that  came  from 
Paris  daily,  of  the  certain  approach  of  death.  So 
Sunday  and  Monday  went  by  —  the  thirty-eighth,  the 
thirty-ninth  day. 

The  dawn  of  Tuesday  broke  upon  a  clear  sky.  It  was 
the  fortieth  day. 

The  spring  on  that  fine  morning  turned  to  summer,  and 
before  noon  the  park  was  full  of  a  crowd  which  moved  as 
though  on  holiday.  The  Parisians  had  come  increasingly 


LOUIS  XVI. 

The  principal  bust  at  Versailles 


THE   DAUPHINE  97 

since  Sunday  into  Versailles.  The  inns  were  full  and  at 
all  the  tables  outside  the  eating-houses  of  the  town  the  people 
eat  their  midday  meal  with  merriment  in  the  open  air. 
Between  the  Park  and  the  town,  huge  and  isolated,  already 
old,  the  palace  alone  was  silent.  There,  each  group  shut 
close  in  its  own  rooms,  awaited  the  one  dismissal,  another 
the  fruit  of  long  intrigue,  another,  in  a  mixture  of  eagerness 
and  dread,  the  new  weight  of  royalty.  It  was  the  tenth 
of  May,  and  still  the  agony  endured.  A  candle  burnt  in  a 
window  above  the  courtyard.  Passing  groups  looked  up 
at  it  furtively;  grooms,  with  bridles  ready  in  their  hands, 
glanced  at  it  from  beneath  the  distant  doors  of  the  guard- 
room and  saw  it  twice  renewed,  as  one  o'clock  and  two 
struck  through  the  afternoon  from  the  chimes  of  St.  Louis. 
Three  struck.  They  looked  again  and  it  was  still  shining. 
Within,  his  head  supported  by  Laborde  the  valet,  his 
mind  still  clear,  the  old  King  still  attempted  with  his  dis- 
torted lips  the  answers  to  the  prayers  for  the  dying.  He 
heard  them  faintly  and  more  faintly  in  that  increasing 
darkness  which  each  of  us  must  face.  When  the  priest  at 
last  came  to  those  loud  words,  "Go  forth,  thou  Christian 
soul,"  his  murmuring  ceased.  The  candle  at  the  window 
was  extinguished.  The  clatter  of  horse-hoofs  rose  from 
the  marble  court  and  the  jangling  of  stirrups  against  mount- 
ing spurs.  The  Duke  of  Bouillon  came  to  the  door  of  the 
room,  stood  before  the  silent  crowd  in  the  (Eil  de  Bceuf, 
and  said  with  ritual  solemnity:  "Gentlemen,  the  King  is 
idead!" 

"  At  that  same  hour  on  that  same  day,  a  British  man-of- 
War  sailed  into  Boston  harbour.  She  bore  orders  to  impose 
Uie  tax  on  tea  which  ultimately  raised  America. 


VI 
THE  THREE  YEARS 

TUESDAY,  THE  lOrn  OF  MAY,  1774,  TO  EASTER  SUNDAY,  APRIL  19,  1778 

FROM  the  death  of  Louis  XV.  to  the  close  of  the 
summer  of  1777  is  a  period  of  somewhat  over  three 
years.  In  those  three  years  the  fates  of  the  French 
monarchy  and  of  the  Queen  Were  decided.  For  though  no 
great  catastrophe  marked  them  nor  even  any  considerable 
fruit  of  policy,  and  though  an  onlooker  would  have  said  no 
more  than  that  something  a  little  disappointing  had,  in  the 
process  of  these  years,  chilled  the  first  enthusiasm  for  the 
new  reign,  yet  we  can  to-day  discover  within  their  limits 
most  of  those  origins  from  which  the  ruin  of  the  future  was 
to  come. 

For  the  Queen  especially,  whom  hitherto  her  minority, 
her  seclusion  and  the  deliberate  silence  of  her  childhood 
had  guarded,  the  opportunities  for  action  which  her  hus- 
band's accession  suddenly  offered  were  opportunities  of 
fate,  and  the  three  years  with  which  this  chapter  has  to  deal 
were  for  her  young  and  exalted  innocence  of  eighteen  like 
that  short  week  of  spring  when  seeds  are  sown  in  a  garden : 
they  were  a  brief  season  of  warmth,  of  vigour,  and  of  clarity 
during  which  circumstance  sowed  for  her  in  every  variety 
the  seeds  of  misfortune  and  of  death.  All  is  there:  the 
advent  of  an  uneasy  gaiety;  the  solace  of  gems,  of  cards, 
of  excessive  friendships;  the  vivid  but  wholly  personal, 
erratic  and  capricious  intervention  in  matters  of  State;  the 

98 


THE  THREE  YEARS  99 

simple  confidence  in  the  policy  of  her  mother's  Austrian 
government  and  the  continual  support  of  it;  the  enmities 
which  all  active  natures  provoke,  but  which  hers  had  a  talent 
for  confirming;  the  friction  of  such  an  activity  against  the 
hard  and,  to  her,  the  alien  qualities  of  the  French  mind  — 
all  these,  which  the  princess  could  try  to  ignore  when  her 
husband  was  but  heir  and  she  in  her  retirement,  appear  with 
the  first  months  of  her  liberty  as  Queen,  strike  root,  and  are 
seen  above  ground  before  she  has  completed  her  twenty- 
second  year.  And  with  these  positive  irritants  their  negative 
reactions  also  come:  the  Court  assumes  its  divisions;  the 
stories  and  the  songs  and  the  nicknames  begin  against  her; 
the  popular  legend  concerning  her  is  conceived;  the  trend  of 
the  Orleans  faction  in  antagonism  to  her  is  established,  and 
a  new  generation  contemporary  with,  or  but  slightly  senior 
to,  her  own  has  become  fixed  within  the  same  three  years  in 
a  direction  which  —  though  none  then  saw  it  —  could  not 
but  destroy  her  in  the  progress  of  years. 

To  understand  in  what  way  the  common  accidents 
that  brief  three  years'  term  moved  to  their  great  effec 
is  necessary  to  know  two  things :  first,  the  physical  infrrn- 
'*JL  nndfT  whi^h  T.rwis^XV/  suffered,  and,  secondly,  the 
nature  of  the  Bourbon  Crown  he  wore :  for  it  is  the  conjunc- 
tion of  such  an  infirmity  with  such  an  office  that  lends  to  the 
first  years  of  his  reign  and  to  the  first  errors  of  his  wife 
their  capital  importance  in  the  history  of  that  one  woman  ' 
and  of  the  world. 


Louis,  it  had  first  been  whispered,  and  Was  now  upon 
his  accession  commonly  asserted,  could  have  no  heir. 

When  first  the  mere  form  of  marriage  between  him  in 


100  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

his  boyhood  and  Marie  Antoinette  (a  child)  had  been 
solemnised,  no  public  and  no  familiar  regard  was  paid  to 
the  relations  between  them.  The  great  ceremony  was 
necessarily  esteemed  a  solemn  and  irrevocable  betrothal 
rather  than  a  wedlock,  and  (as  I  have  already  said)  it  was 
taken  for  granted  that  in  some  two  or  three  years  the  process 
of  nature  would  continue  the  royal  line. 

But  as  the  princess  advanced  to  her  sixteenth,  to  her 
seventeenth  year;  as  her  upstanding  and  vigorous  youth 
achieved  first  a  full  growth,  then  ripeness,  then  maturity, 
and  yet  provoked  no  issue,  the  common  explanation  of 
such  an  accident  could  not  but  be  generally  given  and  the 
impotence  of  the  Dauphin  was  universally  accepted.  At 
eighteen,  in  the  last  autumn  of  the  old  King's  reign,  the 
young  wife  had  stood  apparent  and  triumphant,  clothed 
with  a  charm  which,  if  it  was  not  that  of  beauty,  was 
certainly  that  of  exuberant  life;  a  whole  ball-room  had 
been  arrested  at  her  entrance;  the  crowds  of  Paris  had 
quickened  at  her  approach;  the  lively  look,  the  deep  brows, 

i  the  full  hair,  tender  and  vaguely  red,  which  Fersen  had 

suddenly  revealed,  were  those  of  a  woman  informed 

\vith    an    accumulated    and   expectant   vitality.      It    was 

not  in  her  that  the  defect  could  lie.     Louis,  so  it  plainly 

seemed,  was  deficient  and  was  in  title  only  her  husband. 

A  conjunction  of  this  kind  is  not  uncommon  even  in  an 
active,  healthy,  and  laborious  lineage  of  the  middle  rank; 
among  the  wealthy  it  is  frequent,  in  the  genealogy  of 
families  which  carry  a  public  function,  such  as  those  of 
monarchs  or  of  an  oligarchy,  for  all  the  careful  choice 
which  their  marriages  involve,  it  is  often  present.  Such 
accidents  are  provided  for.  In  mary  cases  probably,  in 
some  certainly,  a  suppositions  child  is  introduced;  when. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  101 

that  course  is  difficult  or  repugnant  the  situation  ix  acknowl- 
edged, the  consort  chooses  between  her  devotions  and  a 
lover;  all  the  planning  and  all  the  necessary  preparation 
which  attach  to  the  succession  regard  the  brother  or  cousin, 
who  is  henceforward  accepted  as  the  heir,  and  his  position 
is  the  more  highly  established  from  the  contrast  his  vigour 
may  afford  to  the  paucity  of  the  reigning  incumbent. 

I  say  such  a  conjunction  is  of  a  known  type  in  history; 
there  were  precedents  for  action  and  a  certain  course  to  be 
pursued.  Monsieur,  the  King's  brother,  would  have 
attracted  the  service  and  respect  to  which  his  then  vigorous 
intellect  was  fitted.  The  Queen's  vagaries  would  have 
been  contemptuously  excused,  for  she  would  have  stood 
apart  from  the  line  of  succession,  and  her  character  would 
have  been  indifferent  to  her  husband's  subjects.  The 
Crown  as  an  institution  would  have  suffered  little,  though 
its  immediate  holder  would  have  lost  personal  prestige,  had 
the  conjecture  of  Louis'  impotence,  which  was,  upon  the 
King's  accession,  common  to  the  Court  and  the  populace, 
been  confirmed. 

Now  that  conjecture  was,  as  the  future  showed,  erro- 
neous. A  very  careful,  sceptical,  and  universal  observer 
might  have  discovered,  even  as  early  as  this  year  of  Louis' 
accession  that  it  was  erroneous. 

In  the  first  place  the  gestures,  habits,  and  character  of 
the  King  were  not  such  as  should  be  associated  with  this 
kind  of  imbecility.  His  body  was  indeed  unhealthy  and 
diseased;  it  was  the  body  of  a  nervous,  overgrown,  loose- 
limbered  child,  inherited  from  a  nervous  father  and  from  an 
exhausted  race;  a  body  which  nature  would  have  removed 
as  it  removed  his  son's,  had  not  the  doctors  built  up  upon 
its  doomed  frame  an  artificial  bulk  of  flesh.  I  say  he  was 


102  MARIE   ANTOINETTE 

diseased,,  but  not  in,  the  manner  then  believed.  The 
febrile  attachment  to  violence,  the  lack  of  humour,  the 
weary  eye,  which  betray  an  insufficiency  of  sex  and  which 
we  so  frequently  suffer  in  political  life  and  at  the  university, 
were  quite  absent  in  Louis.  Contrariwise  he  was  good- 
humoured  and  kindly  (saving  to  cats),  very  fond  of  hard 
riding  and  capable  in  that  exercise;  he  was  further  of  an 
even  though  astonishingly  slow  judgment  and  possessed 
that  desire  to  make  (to  file,  saw,  fit,  design,  ply  a  trade  of 
hand  and  eye)  which  is  an  invariable  accompaniment  of 
virility.  He  loved  and  practised  mechanical  arts,  such 
as  the  locksmith's  or  the  watchmaker's.  There  was  noth- 
ing in  him  of  what  is  nowadays  called  (by  a  French 
euphemism)  "The  Intellectual." 

Were  positive  evidence  lacking  such  general  contrasts 
between  what  he  was  supposed  to  be  and  what  he  was  would 
still  have  great  weight ;  but  evidence  more  exact  can  be  dis- 
covered. The  letters  written  by  Marie  Antoinette  to  her 
mother  afford  it. 

Maria  Theresa  was  in  an  increasing  torment,  as  each 
passing  month  excited  her  bewilderment,  lest  her  daughter 
should  furnish  no  heir  to  the  French  throne  and  the  object 
at  once  of  her  strong  motherly  affection  and  of  her  political 
scheme  should  fail.  Her  questions  were  frequent,  urgent 
and  clear:  her  daughter  replied  to  them  in  terms  which  a 
very  little  reading  will  suffice  to  illumine.  Marie  Antoinette 
was  young  and,  as  I  have  said,  essentially  pure;  she  did  not 
fully  comprehend  the  nature  of  a  situation  which  was  under- 
mining her  serenity  and  gravely  marring  her  entry  into  life, 
but  she  was  able  both  to  express  her  dissatisfaction  and  yet  to 
assure  the  Empress  upon  more  than  one  occasion  that  she 
had  at  last  a  reasonable  hope  of  maternity.  These  hopes 


THE  THREE  YEARS  103 

were  in  each  case  disappointed.  That  such  hopes,  on  the  one 
hand,  certainly  existed,  and  that  the  whole  atmosphere  of 
IKT  married  life  was,  upon  the  other,  false  and  almost 
intolerable,  depended  upon  the  fact  that  Louis  suffered 
from  a  partial  — and  only  a  partial  — mechanical  impedi- 
ment. This  impediment  a  painful  operation  would  suffice 
to  remove;  but  the  knowledge  that  it  was  but  partial,  the 
divergent  advice  of  doctors  and  the  lethargy  which  invariably 
deferred  his  decisions,  all  impelled  the  young  man  towards 
procrastination,  with  the  result  that  in  a  few  months  — 
the  brief  period  immediately  and  before  his  accession  —  his 
wife  had  learned  that  fever  of  the  mind  which  accompanies 
alternations  of  nervous  incertitude;  she  had  weighing  upon 
her  a  perpetual  and  acute  anxiety  which  was  the  more 
corroding  in  that  it  contained  so  considerable  an  element 
of  physical  ill-ease. 

The  detail  is  highly  intimate  and  would  merit  no 
place  in  any  biography  but  this.  It  must  be  fixed,  and 
has  been  fixed  here,  first  because  to  neglect  it  is  to  ignore 
the  misfortune  from  which  (if  from  one  origin)  flowed  the 
destruction  certainly  of  the  Queen,  and  very  probably  of 
the  French  Monarchy  itself  —  a  matter  of  moment  to 
every  European;  secondly,  because  history  has  never  yet 
given  it  its  true  place  nor  fully  set  forth  its  nature  and 
importance. 

In  such  a  situation  Marie  Antoinette's  quick  nature  took 
refuge  in  every  stimulant ;  wine  she  disliked  —  it  was  among 
her  few  but  marked  eccentricities  that  throughout  her  life 
she  would  taste  nothing  but  water  —  but  gaming,  jewels, 
doubtful  books,  many  and  new  voices  about  her,  violets 
contrasts,  caprice  upon  caprice,  unexpected  visits,  /~ 
passions  for  this  or  that  new  friend,  excessive  lau£n :  devoted^ 

^—  * 


i 


104  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

excessive  pique),  emotions  seized  wherever  they  could  be 
found  —  watching  in  merry  vigils  for  summer  dawns,  masked 
balls  that  took  up  all  the  winter  nights,  escapades:  in  a 
word,  a  swirl  of  the  fantastic  and  the  new  became  for  her  a 
necessity  that  —  had  it  taken  some  one  form  —  would  have 
been  called  a  vice.  Her  dissipation  was  driven,  as  vice  is 
driven,  with  a  spur;  it  was  compatible,  as  vice  is  compatible 
with  her  original  virtues;  it  produced,  as  vice  produces, 
a  progressive  interior  ill-ease.  She  was  a  tortured  woman 
in  those  years. 

Children  became  a  craving  to  her. 

One  day  as  she  went,  with  the  lady  who  was  supposed  to 
control  the  etiquette  of  her  life,  as  she  went  sadly  in  her 
coach  along  the  western  road,  she  turned  off  it  along  a  by- 
lane  for  her  pleasure,  and  reached  that  village  of  St.  Michel 
which  lies  upon  the  slope  of  the  hill  above  Bougival.  As  she 
passed  through  the  village  in  her  grandeur  and  took  the 
Louveciennes  road,  she  saw  a  peasant  child  and,  by  a 
sudden  but  most  intense  and  profound  impulse,  caught  it 
up  and  said  she  would  make  it  hers.  It  was  a  little  tiny 
boy,  still  a  baby,  toddling  upon  the  road;  it  had  been  chris- 
tened James;  the  name  of  its  parents  was  Amand.  The 
freak  was  good  news  for  them;  they  blessed  her,  and  she 
went  away.  And  the  child  was  to  be  adopted  and  brought 
up  at  her  expense,  and  she  was  to  watch  it  in  Versailles. 

Very  many  years  later  his  name  came  up  again,  obscure, 
but  fixed,  in  the  roll-call  of  a  battle,  and  We  shall  read  it 
once  more,  stamped  across  the  strange  sequence  of  her  life. 


assure  vone  desires  to  see,  in  a  very  modern  and  tawdry 

had  at  laliat  evil  had  possessed  the  mind  of  this  well-born 

j. 


, 


THE  THREE  YEARS  105 

lady,  let  him  watch  (from  some  distance)  a  certain  financial 
world  in  London  and  that  cosmopolitan  gang  in  Paris  to 
which  that  world  is  allied  by  blood  and  in  whose  support 
—  whenever   it   is    endangered  —  they    are    to    be    found, 
for  in  Paris  and  London  they  are  one.     With  far  morei 
refinement  and  with  infinitely  greater  variety,  she  (like  those! 
modern  money-dealers)  sought  in  a  rush  of  fantastic  andl 
novel  experience  to  assuage  a  thirst.     They  have  no  plea 
save  the  coarseness  of  their  lineage.     She  had  for  excuse 
the  gnawing  of  a  position  which  none  about  her  compre- 
hended and  which  she  herself,  though  her  body  resented  it, 
saw  but  dimly  with  her  young  mind,  and  which  disturbed 
her  as  a  confused,  intolerable  thing. 

From  within,  therefore,  she  is  amply  to  be  excused ;  but 
consider  the  effect  of  her  fever  upon  those  who  saw  her. 
Consider  the  effect  of  this  new  manner  of  hers  upon  the 
public  function  of  the  French  Monarchy. 

The  French  have,  with  their  own  hands,  destroyed  the 
conception  of  "a  king":  in  Europe  to-day  we  look  around 
and  find  nothing  of  monarchy  remaining.  A  few  impover- 
ished symbols,  a  few  indebted,  a  few  insufficiently  salaried 
men,  of  whose  true  character  the  public  knows  nothing, 
afford  or^do  not  afford  unifying  titles  for  a  bureaucracy 
there,  an  oligarchy  here:  in  Italy  a  national  name,  in  Spain 
a  moribund  tradition.  But  that  monarchy  which  the 
Gaulish  energy  had  drawn  out  of  the  stuff  of  old  Rome 
was  another  matter;  it  was  a  sacramental  alliance  between 
an  idea  and  a  thing. 

The  Idea  was  that  of  the  Gallic  formula  "without  author- 
ity there  is  no  life" — for  authority  is  authorship:  this 
Gallic  formula  also  sustains  the  faith. 

The  Thing  was  one  lineage  of  actual  Jiving  menr  devoted  ^i 


106  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

from  father  to  son  —  sacrificed  almost  as  in  a  public  sac- 
'  rifice  —  condemned  to  the  perpetual  burden  of  being  mixed 
into  this  Idea  and  of  supporting  the  burden  of  its  intensity 
and  power. 

There  had  descended  from  the  Merovingian  and  the 
Carolingian  families  to  the  Capetian,  bearing  a  power 
that  increased  with  every  century,  the  conception  of  a  creative 
executive  made  flesh;  an  executive  that  should  reside  in  the 
living  matter  of  a  family  of  men  who  should  be  seen,  known, 
touched,  loved  or  hated;  who  should  rapidly  pronounce 
new  and  necessary  laws,  actively  preserve  the  yet  more 
necessary  body  of  ancient  and  fundamental  custom,  observe 
in  public  the  religion  of  the  community,  and,  above  all, 
lead  in  battle.  That  was  the  role;  that  was  the  mould, 
the  bond  of  heredity  forced  many  an  incongruity  into  that 
mould  (a  child  sometimes  and  sometimes  a  madman), 
yet  —  so  short  is  one  human  life  in  the  general  story  of  a 
nation  —  the  gap  thus  formed  was  rapidly  filled  by  a  suc- 
cessor, and  the  permament  impression  remained  of  a 
soldier  incarnating  a  community  of  soldiers. 

This  institution  had  now  endured  for  much  more  than 
a  thousand  years.  This  Gallic  institution  had  impressed 
itself  (here,  as  in  Germany,  by  imitation;  there,  as  in 
Britain,  by  direct  importation)  upon  all  the  civilisation 
of  the  West.  It  had  grown  old,  as  must  all  human  institu- 
tions that  have  no  direct  sustenance  from  forces  outside 
time;  but  even  so  it  maintained  a  mysterious  vitality. 
Its  kings  were  anointed.  It  held  a  sort  of  compact  with 
the  Divine,  and  in  this  its  old  age  was  still  alive  with  a 
salutary  if  a  grotesque  publicity. 

The  King  and  Queen  of  France  were  the  least  protected 
of  any  in  the  realm  from  insult,  satire,  and  gibe;  even 


THE  THREE  YEAfcS  107 

where  their  own  law  protected  them  a  general  conspiracy, 
as  it  were,  the  instinct  of  all  society,  defended  the 
pamphleteer. 

The  King  and  Queen  were  publicly  owned:  all  they  \ 
had  was  public  money;  all  they  did  they  did  before  a  crowd. 
Every  week  they  dined  at  a  table  in  a  vast  hall.  Their 
nobles  stood  by  but  did  not  eat — before  them  a  thousand 
or  (according  to  the  weather)  ten  thousand  of  the  populace 
defiled  curiously  and  unceasingly.  They  prayed  in  public. 
They  were  expected  to  receive  in  public  the  applause  or 
the  condemnation  of  all.  They  were  public  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  secret  things,  conspiracies,  masonries,  Templars, 
trusts,  rings.  They  were  publicly  approached  by  any 
at  random  and  publicly  claimed  as  the  public  redressers  of 
wrong  —  always  in  theory  and  often  in  actual  fact.  Nay, 
their  physical  acts  were  public.  They  dressed  and  undressed 
before  an  audience  —  or  rather  were  dressed  and  undressed 
by  these.  The  birth  of  every  royal  child  was  witnessed  by 
a  mob  crowding  the  Queen's  chamber. 

The  vast  inconvenience  of  such  a  part  was  but  one 
aspect  of  its  sanctity,  and  the  Crown  united,  as  in  the 
heart  of  a  mystery,  the  functions  of  Victim  and  of  Lord. 

Amid  the  great  new  wealth  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  in  the  glare  of  its  brilliant  new  intelligence,  it  may  be 
imagined  with  what  a  fence  of  tradition  and  precedent 
public  opinion  and  its  own  nature  insisted  on  defending 
this  national  centre.  The  anecdotes  of  that  rigid,  minute, 
and  often  inhuman  etiquette  are  too  well  known  to  need 
repetition  here.  Two  instances  may  suffice. 

The  Queen  could  drink  nothing  by  night  or  by  day  but 
from  the  hand  of  the  highest  in  rank  of  the  women  present, 
nor  could  this  last  accept  the  glass  and  the  water  save 


108  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

from  the  hand  of  a  page.  The  King  must  not  eat  at  all 
until  he  had  performed  an  ablution  like  a  priest :  the  vessels 
of  this  and  the  napkin  were  sacred;  rather  than  put  them 
to  a  profane  use,  when  they  had  once  done  their  service 
they  were  destroyed  by  fire. 

Such  extravagances  in  the  old  age  of  an  institution 
lend  themselves  to  ridicule  as  do  (for  instance)  the  fantastic 
ceremonies  of  our  House  of  Commons  or  the  comic-opera 
costumes  of  our  court  officials  and  of  peers.  But  though, 
isolated,  they  present  this  weakness,  collectively,  and  seen 
in  relation  to  the  function  they  serve,  such  survivals  have 
a  meaning,  and  a  consideration  of  such  ceremonial  helps 
men  to  a  comprehension  of  the  institution  it  surrounds. 

Conceive,  then  —  for  it  is  the  note  of  all  this  chapter  — 
the  impact  of  such  a  mood  as  that  of  the  distracted  Queen 
upon  such  a  Court,  stiff  with  such  traditions  and  living 
under  such  a  bright  beam  of  publicity,  the  mark  of  a 
million  eyes  all  keen  to  discern  whatever  trifle  was  done 
between  midday  and  dawn!  Marie  Antoinette  chafed 
impatiently  against  this  central  national  institution.  The 
fever  now  upon  her  caused  her  always  to  despise  and 
sometimes  to  neglect  the  rules  that  were  of  the  essence  of 
her  position.  The  moral  and  internal  constraint  which 
tortured  her  inflamed  her  to  "live  her  life";  but  for 
those  of  great  wealth  and  opportunity  such  a  mood  is  and 
must  be  dissipation ;  dissipation  in  its  fullest  sense :  the  dis- 
persion not  only  of  character  and  of  self-discipline,  but 
of  responsibility,  of  externals  even,  and  at  last  of  power. 
It  meant,  and  necessarily  meant,  the  patronage  of  those 
far  below  her  and  their  consequent  estrangement;  the 
contempt  of  those  immediately  beneath  her  and  their 
consequent  enmity. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  109 

Just  after  the  old  King's  death  the  Court  was  at 
La  Muette.  She  must  needs,  to  prove  her  liberty,  go  up 
and  talk  familiarly  to  an  old  gardener  like  any  Lady  Bounti- 
ful. The  old  gardener's  annoyance  is  not  recorded;  that 
of  her  ladies  is.  They  complained  to  the  King,  who  was 
troubled,  but  who,  knowing  the  truth,  answered,  "Let 
her  be." 

That  same  day,  when  a  deputation  of  the  Burgesses' 
wives  paid  her  their  court,  coming  from  the  city  at  her  gatei 
and  full  of  ceremony,  she  could  do  nothing  more  dignified! 
than  giggle  at  their  awkwardness  and  at  their  dress.     In* 
the  intervals   of,   according  to   each,  a  pompous  greeting, 
she  must  whisper  to  one  or  other  of  her  ladies  most  unpom- 
pously;    the  very  servants   were   rendered   uneasy   by  her 
manner. 

In  how  many  ways  and  how  rapidly  this  mood   (this  I 
physical,  fatal,  necessary  mood)   was  to  wear  down  her  \ 
position   immediately   after   her    accession    to   the   throne    \ 
many  examples  will  show.     The  best  and  the  most  general 
aspect  from  which  one  may  first  regard  it  is  her  attempted 
immixture  in  public  affairs,  for  that  also  was  a  fretful  and 
personal  thing,  part  of  her  mood. 


The  first  six  or  seven  months  of  the  new  reign  cover 
the  'period  which  was  officially  that  of  mourning  for  Louis 
XV.  and  are  for  the  general  historian  of  this  importance: 
that  in  them  was  fixed  the  new  ministerial  tradition  which 
culminated  in  the  summoning  of  the  States-General. 

This  new  tradition  owed  nothing  to  the  Queen.     She 
was  hardly  aware  of  its  presence.     For  her  the  choice  off 
new  Ministers   was   a   personal    and    almost    a   domestic! 


110  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

business  in  which  she  somehow  had  a  right  (and  could  find 
it  entertaining)  to  play  a  part  —  she  knew  not  what  or  how. 
That  part  of  hers  turned  out,  as  a  fact,  a  small  part  and 
indecisive,  utterly  without  plan ;  but  such  as  it  was  it  marks 
her  necessity  for  action  and  change,  and  exhibits  her  place 
beside  the  King.  In  the  intervals  of  choosing  a  new  hair- 
dresser and  a  new  dressmaker,  she  paused  now  half  an 
hour,  now  an  hour,  in  the  cabinet,  hearing  names  which 
lshe  hardly  knew,  and  giving  random  advice  which  must 
lhave  strained  her  audience  to  the  very  limits  of  toleration. 
It  was  not  mere  Austrian  action.  Her  brother  the 
Emperor  would  often  beg  her  not  to  meddle;  the  Austrian 
ambassador,  Mercy,  deplored  her  innocence  of  affairs  and 
her  inability  to  follow  any  one  interest  for  one  hour.  Her 
mother  wrote  affectionately  and  worriedly,  giving  her  the 
stale  old  advice  of  supporting  Vienna  —  but  fearing  her 
capacity  to  do  so.  Meanwhile,  the  Queen  herself  acted 
from  the  simple  motive  of  being  seen  about,  and  added  to 
this  the  equally  simple  motives  of  private  tastes.  Thus  she 
would  have  restored  Choiseul  to  some  office.  He  came 
up  a  month  after  the  accession,  and  she  greeted  him  very 
kindly.  He  had  helped  to  make  her  Queen,  he  was  the 
traditional  ally  of  Vienna,  and  though  Vienna  certainly 
did  not  want  him  now,  Marie  Antoinette  went  by  the  name 
and  its  associations  alone:  she  judged  as  a  child  would 
judge.  The  King,  who  had  no  intention  of  accepting 
Choiseul,  made  a  little  awkward  conversation  with  him,  the 
opening  *  of  which  turned  pleasantly  upon  the  old  man's 
baldness,  and  next  day  Choiseul  went  back  home,  "to  see 
to  the  tedding  of  his  hay." 

\     Again,  the  choice  of  Maurepas  for  chief  Minister,  four 
Weeks  before,  was  not  —  as  has  been  represented  —  hers. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  111 

The  King  chose  his  father's  old  friend  rather  for  permanent 
adviser  and  companion  than  as  a' first  Minister -- which 
title  indeed  he  never  received,  and  that  Maurepas  entered 
at  all  was  the  work  not  even  of  the  King  himself,  but  of  his 
aunt,  Mme.  Adelaide.  In  the  confusion  of  the  first  two 
days  when  Sartines,  Choiseul,  Machault  were  all  possible 
as  prime  ministers  and  all  discussed,  Madame  Adelaide 
repeatedly  suggested  Maurepas'  name.  To  her  and  her 
sisters  he  was  a  tradition,  part  of  a  time  which  these  old 
maids  looked  back  to  with  regret  as  the  last  time  of  dignity, 
before  mistresses  had  destroyed  their  father's  Court  and 
half  exiled  them  to  their  apartments. 

Maurepas  was  seventy-three;  he  had  left  office  between 
forty  and  fifty,  and  had  done  so  from  a  quarrel  with  the 
Pompadour.  This  alone  recommended  him  to  Louis  XV.'s 
daughter;  that  he  should  have  been  untouched  by  the 
vile  interregnum  of  the  Du  Barry  recommended  him  still 
more.  Madame  Adelaide  had  known  him  in  power  when, 
as  a  girl  of  seventeen,  the  eldest  of  the  sisters,  she  was  cer- 
tain of  life,  in  tune  with  her  great  position,  and  pleased 
with  all  she  saw.  Now  after  twenty-five  years,  which  had 
been  increasingly  marred  by  a  distant  and  bitter  isolation 
from  the  Court,  his  name  recurred  to  her  as  that  of  a  fellow- 
sufferer  and  a  memory  of  her  youth.  Madame  Adelaide's 
devoted  service  in  her  father's  last  illness  (she  had  caught 
the  small-pox  herself  in  attending  him)  gravely  increased 
the  weight  of  her  advice.  It  was  through  her  that  Louis 
XVI.  received  the  old  man,  and,  once  received,  he  remained. 
True,  Marie  Antoinette  had  carried  the  message  to  the  King 
from  his  aunt,  but  she  had  done  no  more  than  this. 

If  it  is  asked  why,  with  so  little  influence,  the  Queen's 
perpetual  interference  was  none  the  less  permitted,  and 


112  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

why  this  girl  of  eighteen,  vivacious  as  she  was  ignorant, 
might  ceaselessly  bustle  in  and  out  of  the  council  chamber, 
the  answer  is  not  that  she  was  Queen  —  for  no  Queen  had 
yet  acted  thus  at  Versailles,  nor  would  any  woman  conscious 
of  power  have  done  so  —  but  first  that  her  whole  self  was 
mow  restless  beyond  bearing,  and  next  that  the  King  was 
ashamed  to  withstand  her  whom,  afflicted  as  he  was,  he 
bould  hardly  propose  to  command  or  regulate.  With  every 
fresh  opening  of  the  council  door  she  made  an  enemy,  with 
yione  a  friend;  but  Louis  all  the  while  could  only  answer, 
TLet  her  be." 

In  one  thing  only  during  these  months  had  she  a  clear 
object,  and  that  was  not  a  policy:  she  was  determined 
to  be  rid  of  the  Du  Barry's  name.  That  woman  was  far 
away,  exiled  to  Burgundy  from  the  moment  of  the  accession, 
to  return  afterwards  to  Louveciennes,  but  some  of  her  clique 
remained,  hated  by  all  the  populace  and  half  the  Court  as 
much  as  by  the  Queen.  With  so  much  support  Marie 
Antoinette  succeeded.  Three  weeks  after  the  death  of 
Louis  XV.,  D'Aiguillon  was  relieved  of  the  department  of 
Foreign  Affairs:  the  grant  of  public  money  which  he 
received  on  his  resignation  —  it  was  but  £20,000  —  would 
seem  to  us  in  modern  England  pitifully  small,  for  we  take 
it  for  granted  that  public  officials  should  have  a  share  in 
the  public  funds.  But  it  is  significant  of  the  time  and  of 
the  French  temper  that  the  grant  was  vigorously  opposed 
and  was  obtained  only  on  the  personal  demand  of  old 
Maurepas,  who  (by  one  of  those  coincidences  so  frequent  in 
aristocracies)  happened  to  be  the  uncle  of  this  his  chief 
political  opponent. 

Here  was  Marie  Antoinette's  one  success.  The  Austrian 
Court  and  Embassy  had  desired  to  keep  D'Aiguillon  — lie 


THE  THREE  YEARS  113 

could  be  played  upon.  Marie  Antoinette  had  rejected 
their  advice,  she  had  gone,  day  after  day,  to  the  King,  until 
he  had  consented  to  deprive  D'Aiguillon  of  his  post  — 
and  immediately  her  deficiency  was  apparent.  To  deprive 
D'Aiguillon  was,  in  politics,  not  necessary,  and,  if  accom- 
plished, not  final.  To  find  someone  for  the  Foreign  Office 
who  should  at  once  be  able  and  yet  work  contentedly 
under  old  Maurepas  was  of  both  immediate  and  of  weighty 
importance.  She  refused  to  interest  herself  in  the  matter! 

Luckily  for  France,  .Vergennes,  then  the  representative 
of  Louis  at  the  Court  of  Stockholm,  was  chosen  by  the 
good  judgment  of  the  King,  in  spite  of  an  impossible 
oriental  wife. 

Vergennes,  approaching  his  sixtieth  year,  tenacious, 
silent,  industrious,  highly  experienced,  and  microscopic, 
as  it  were,  in  the  detail  of  diplomacy,  was  just  such  an  one 
as  the  French  needed  to  conserve  the  forces  of  their  nation, 
to  balance  the  smaller  states  against  the  rivals  of  Versailles 
and  to  choose  the  very  moment  for  the  attack  on  England 
which,  later,  was  to  establish  the  United  States.  It  is 
probable  that,  but  for  him,  in  the  embarrassment  of  French 
finance  and  the  consequent  weakness  of  French  arms,  the 
nation  would  have  fallen  into  some  German  conflict  or  have 
been  abused  before  some  German  contention.  As  it  was,  the 
French  owe  in  great  part  to  Vergennes  that  peaceful  accumu-J 
lation  of  energy  which  permitted  the  revolution  to  triumph.! 

In  the  nomination  of  this  considerable  diplomatic  force! 
the  Queen  had  no  part  at  all.  i 

She  had  no  part  in  the  nomination  of  Turgot.  * 

It  is  difficult  to  write  the  name  of  "  Turgot "  without  admit- 
ting a  digression,  though  such  a  digression  adapts  itself 
but  ill  to  any  account  of  the  Queen. 


114  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Turgot  is  the  name  that  dominates  the  first  two  years 
of  the  reign  for  every  historian.  The  time  has  hardly 
come  to  criticise  him.  Criticism  of  his  faults  is  easy;  a 
full  appreciation  is  difficult,  so  near  are  we  still  to  his  time, 
and  so  exactly  did  he  represent  the  spirit  which  was  at  that 
moment  germinating  in  every  intellect,  so  active  was  he  in 
its  expression.  The  over- simple  economies,  the  plain 
egalitarian  political  theory,  the  positive  scepticism  (the 
Faith  was  then  at  its  lowest  throughout  the  world),  the 
glorious  self-possession,  the  rectitude,  yes,  and  the  interior 
glow  of  the  "Philosophers,"  all  the  Genius  of  the  Republic 
was  incarnate  in  this  man.  When  upon  that  singular  date 
(it  was  the  14th  of  July)  he  entered  the  Ministry, 
there  entered  with  him  the  figure,  winged  for  victory  yet 
austere,  whose  mission  it  was  to  create  the  great  and  perilous 
Europe  we  now  know.  I  mean  the  Republic.  Already 
Napoleon  was  born. 

Marie  Antoinette  had  no  knowledge  of  this  spirit.  It 
had  not  approached  her.  She  knew  vaguely  that  it  was 
indifferent  to  her  religion  (to  which  the  very  young  woman 
was  already  sensibly  though  slightly  attached).  She  knew 
much  more  clearly  from  current  talk  that  it  (and  Turgot) 
stood  at  that  moment  especially  for  Retrenchment;  and  that 
word  Entrenchment  she  approved,  for  she  had  no  conception 

'of  the  sensations  that  might  ensue  upon  it  to  her  own  life 
if  from  a  word  it  should  become  a  policy.     And  Turgot 

1  himself    had    spared    her    sensibilities    by    doubling    her 
pin-money. 

(I  say  she  had  no  part  in  the  nominating  of  Turgot  - 
in  his  fall  she  was  to  have  too  great  a  part. 

By  the  end  of  August  the  new  Ministry  and  its  policy 
were  complete.  All  the  Du  Barry  gang  and  all  the  memo- 


THE  THREE  YEARS  115 

ries  of  Louis  XV.'s  end  were  gone  — burnt  and  hanged  in 
effigy  by  the  populace  as  well.  In  their  place  sat  a  council 
whose  actual  head  and  principal  figure  was  the  young 
King,  slow,  large,  assiduous,  freckled,  pale,  in  a  perpetual 
obese  anxiety,  ardently  seeking  an  issue  to  the  entanglement 
of  his  realm;  whose  senior  was  the  chiselled  old  Maurepas, 
intensely  national,  witty,  experienced  in  men,  but  neither 
instructed  nor  of  a  recent  practice  in  affairs;  whose  foreign 
affairs  were  dealt  with  by  the  methodical  gravity  of  Ver-_~ - 
gennes;  whose  navy  was  in  the  honest  hands  of  Sartines, 
and  whose  finance  —  the  pivot  of  every  policy,  but  in 
France  of  '74  life  and  death  —  lay  under  the  complete  con- 
trol fXaxg^^  C— 

I  have  said  that  finance  had  become  for  the  French  in 
1774  a  matter  of  life  and  death;  and  the  point  is  of  such 
capital  importance  to  the  Queen's  story  that  I  must  beg 
the  reader  to  consider  it  here,  at  the  outset  of  her  reign. 

What  was  the  economic  entanglement  of  the  French/ 
Crown  at  this  moment  r|  The  reply  to  that  question  is 
not  part  of  Marie  Antoinette's  character  and  conduct,  but 
it  so  persistently  and  gravely  affected  her  life  and  it  is  so 
dominating  a  feature  of  revolutionary  history  that  a  clear 
conception  of  it  must  be  entertained  before  any  general 
understanding  of  the  period  can  be  achieved.  Not  that  the 
financial  difficulty  was  a  main  cause  of  the  Revolution  — 
to  assert  as  much  would  be  to  fall  into  the  puerile  inver- 
sion which  makes  of  history  an  economic  phenomenon  — * 
but  that  the  financial  difficulty  was  a  limiting  condition 
which  perpetually  checked  and  perverted  the  thought 
of  the  time  whenever  that  thought  attempted  to  express 
itself  in  action. 

The  clearest  background  against  which  to  appreciate  the 


116  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

finance  of  old  monarchical  France  is  that  of  the  England 
which  was  its  triumphant  rival. 

The  United  Kingdom  had  at  that  time  less  than  half  the 
population   of  France.     The  territory  of  England  was  in 
much    the    same   proportion  —  at    least,   her    arable   and 
industrial  territory.     Her   white   colonial   population   was 
larger  then,  in  proportion  to  her  home  population,  than  it 
is  now,  but  she  had  not  then  the  full  wealth  of  India  to  tax 
nor  the  vast  revenues  now  drawn,  both  in  usury  and  in  true 
profit  *  —  from  Australasia,  Southern  America,  and  Africa. 
In  other  words,  the  prosperity  of  England  at  that  time  was 
domestic  and  real;  it  contained  no  parasitic  or  perilous 
element  which  a  war  could  interrupt  and  a  defeat  destroy. 
This  England  bore  with  ease  a  national  debt  of  over  130 
I  million   pounds.     She   was  about  to  engage  in  a  struggle 
[which  would  nearly  double  that  debt,  and  yet  to  feel  no 
^weakness.     She  raised  a  revenue  of  ten  to  eleven  millions, 
which  in  a  few  years  rose  without  effort  to  fifteen  —  then 
at  the  end  of  it  all  she  was  free  to  triple  her  debt  during 
the  great  European  war  against  Napoleon,  and  yet  trium- 
phantly to  increase,  and,  when  the  war  was  over,  to  survive, 
1  the  only  nation  with  a  credit,  and  at  once  the  bank  and 
/  the  workshop  of  Europe. 

France,  so  much  larger  in  area  and  population  and 
inheriting  so  superior  a  tradition  of  magnitude,  had  all  but 
failed.  With  citizens  double  the  English  in  number,  and 
with  an  arable  soil  in  proportion,  the  French  Crown  could 
only  with  the  utmost  difficulty  attract  to  the  exchequer  a 
sum  of  barely  twelve  —  at  the  most  and  counting  every 
expedient,  thirteen — million  pounds  from  the  national 

1 1  mean  by  usury  interest  levied  upon  unproductive  loans;   I  mean  by  true  profit  the  share  of  produce  legiti- 
mately claimed  by  the  lender  of  funds  which  have  been  put  to  productive  use. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  117 

income.  Briefly,  England  could  support  with  ease  a  larger 
debt  than  could  this  neighbouring  nation,  twice  her  size; 
England  could  spend  with  prodigality  as  much  as  that 
nation  was  compelled  to  spend  with  parsimony;  and 
England  could  raise  without  effort  a  revenue  already 
equal,  soon  to  be^superior,  to  that  which  the  rival  govern- 
ment could  but  barely  extract  from  its  subjects. 

Nor  does  this  comparison  exhaust  the  contrast  between 
financial  health  and  disease  upon  either  side  of  the  Channel. 
England  thus  prosperous  was  increasingly  at  ease;  France 
thus  exhausted  was  increasingly  embarrassed.  Deficit 
followed  deficit;  that  expenditure  should  exceed  revenue 
had  become  a  normal  annual  incident  publicly  discounted, 
nay,  a  sort  of  fixed  ratio  appeared  between  wrhat  should 
be  and  what  was  the  income  of  the  government,  and  the 
expenditure  exceeded  revenue  with  a  solemn  regularity 
much  in  the  proportion  of  44  to  37.  In  the  American  War, 
which  either  nation  was  approaching,  England,  defeated, 
was  to  incur  170  million  of  debts,  and  yet  to  emerge,  a  few 
years  after  the  defeat,  financially  stronger  than  ever  in  the 
Wars  of  the  Revolution.  France,  victorious,  was  to  incur 
but  a  third  of  that  liability,  and  yet  in  the  Revolution 
France  was  compelled  to  declare  herself  insolvent. 

Why  did  so  startling  a  contrast  appear?  To  us  to-day 
it  is  almost  inconceivable.  The  French  are  now  some- 
what less  in  population  than  the  English,  they  pretend  to  no 
serious  empire  beyond  the  Mediterranean,  yet  they  raise  for 
"national  purposes  a  larger  revenue,  and  they  raise  it  with 
far  greater  facility;  they  support  a  debt  double  our  own, 
without  troubling  the  least  gullible  and  most  thrifty  invest- 
ing public  in  Europe.  Considerable  additions  to  their  total 
liability  hardly  affect  their  credit,  while  England's  falls  by 


118  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

t  a  quarter  of  its  index  upon  the  issues  of  a  hundred  and  fifty 
millions.     The  value  of  their  agricultural  land  rises  rapidly, 
as  does  that  of  their  urban;  they  find  public  money  for 
enterprises  which  we  scout  or  neglect.     Their  universities, 
though  dependent  on  public  funds,  abound;   their  national 
church,  deprived  of  official  assistance,  flourishes  on  but  a 
fraction  of  their  surplus  wealth;  their  historical  buildings 
are   kept   up   in   magnificence   upon   public   funds.     It   is 
.  I  difficult,  I  say,  for  an  Englishman   to  try  to  appreciate 
I/  the     overwhelming     economic     advantage     which,     under 
v, George  III.,  England  enjoyed  over  the  Bourbons,  who  were 
I  her  rivals ;  because  in  the  course  of  a  century,  and  especially 
"    of  the  present  generation,   the  tables  have  been  turned. 
It  is  England  now  that  is  in  doubt  as  to  her  financial  posi- 
tion and  her  fiscal  methods.     It  is  in  England  that  money 
is    lacking    for    necessary    social    reforms.     It    is    English 
credit  which  fluctuates  with  violence,  and  English  direct 
taxation  which  is  strained  to  breaking  point. 

In  the  time  of  which  I  write  all  these  perils  and  disad- 
vantages attached  to  France  and  to  France  alone.     The 
/France  which  England  faced   in   the  great  struggle   was 
!.a  France  labouring  in  anxiety  for  money,  and  the  cause 

)*of   that   increasing   pressure   is   apparent   to   History:   the 
method  of  public  economics  had  failed  in  France  then  as 
Iperhaps  it  is  now  failing  here  in  England. 

Men  inherit,  and  of  necessity  every  generation  is  shut 
in  with  custom.  Who  would  in  England  to-day  dream 
of  taxing  the  mass  of  Englishmen  —  or  rather,  of  taxing 
them  directly  and  to  their  own  knowledge  ?  The  very  idea 
is  laughable!  There  may  be  coming  into  a  (coal-miner's 
cottage  in  Durham  twice  the  income  of  a  clerk,  but  who 
would  dare  send  in  an  assessment  or  talk  of  a  shilling  in 


THE  THREE  YEARS  119 

^_ 

the  pound  ?  The  clerk  must  pay ;  the  miner  go  free  —  for 
such  is  the  tradition  of  the  Six.  Who  would  rate  the  houses 
of  the  wealthiest  class  as  the  houses  of  the  middle  class  are 
rated?  It  would  seem  madness.  So,  but  in  a  more  acute 
fashion,  did  the  financial  system  of  France  suffer'  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Its  data,  its  conventions 
were  those  of  an  older  state  of  society  long  departed.  It 
pre-supposed  the  manor,  and  the  manor  was  dead;  it  pre- 
supposed the  self-contained  countryside  at  a  moment  when 
the  various  provinces  of  the  whole  State  had  long  been 
intimately  bound  together  by  commerce  and  when  strong 
international  links  of  exchange  had  already  begun  to  arise. 
The  evil  was  a  fiscal  system  out  of  touch  with  the  realities 
of  the  time.  The  remedy  was  a  violent  and  rapid  remodel- 
ling of  that  system.  All  could  perceive  the  evil,  many  the 
remedy;  but  custom  and  the  collective  force  of  private 
avarice  in  the  individual  minds,  checked,  and  checked 
sharply,  with  the  blind  control  of  a  natural  force,  all  reform 
that  attempted  to  act  and  to  do.  The  attempt  at  reform 
was  baulked,  as  a  natural  force  baulks  human  purpose,  by 
a  million  atomic  actions.  The  million  separate  interests 
refused  it. 

For  such  an  attempt,  for  such  audacity,  Turgot  with 
his  austere,  convinced,  and  isolated  mind,  was  better  suited 
than  any  other  man;  yet  even  he  in  a  very  few  months  had 
refused  to  level  the  hard-grained  social  knots  which  blunted 
every  tool  of  the  reformer  who  would  level  the  inequalities 
of  the  State.  Within  two  years  his  attempt  had  failed  and 
he  had  resigned  —  but  while  the  resistance  of  the  tax-payer 
counted  for  much  in  his  resignation,  the  increasing  ill- 
balance  of  his  young  Queen  counted  for  more. 

During  the    first  part  of   his   administration  of  finance 


\ 


120  IV.ARIE  ANTOINETTE 

her  ill-balance  was  not  so  marked  as  to  give  promise  of 
what  was  to  come.     No  folly,  no  conspicuous  extravagance 
marred  the  first  weeks  of  her  reign  — her  inchoate  and  girl- 
ish interruptions  into  the  Council  were  of  ill-omen;  but  as 
the  new  Court  settled  down  into  its  stride,  accumulated  its 
first  traditions  and  began  to  take  on  a  character  of  its  own, 
her  aspect  in  the  public  eye  was  daily  fixed  with  greater 
1  clearness,   and   the   impression   so   conveyed   to   a   nation 
I  already  in  rapid  transition  was  a  further  element  of  irri- 
'!  tation  and  confusion. 

For  the  permanently  present  threat  of  poverty  and 
embarrassment,  which  with  every  year  corroded  more  and 
more  deeply  the  public  service  and  rendered  less  and  less 
stable  the  general  equilibrium  of  the  State,  lent  to  the 
habits  the  Queen  was  about  to  form,  and  still  more  to  the 
public  exaggeration  of  those  habits,  a  gravity  they  could 
never  otherwise  have  assumed.  It  was  part  of  her  lot  that 
she  could  not,  from  the  very  nature  of  her  position,  under- 
stand the  relationship  between  her  petty  extravagances 
and  the  popular  ill-ease. 

She  was  right.  Her  extravagance,  such  as  it  was,  came 
slowly  — nay,  though  showing  excess  in  her  character,  it 
was  never  really  excessive  in  amount;  the  sums  we  mention 
when  we  speak  of  it  are  trifling  when  we  compare  them 
with  the  financial  debauchery  of  our  own  age.  Why,  that 
whole  annual  increase  in  her  allowance  which  Turgot  has 
been  blamed  for  making  would  not  have  paid  for  one  night's 
riot  in  the  house  of  some  one  of  our  London  Jews,  nor 
even  when  her  expenses  did  exceed  the  limit  she  should  have 
set  upon  them;  even  when,  as  month  followed  month,  the 
love  of  jewellery  and  the  distraction  of  cards  involved  her 
in  private  debt,  the  sums  so  wasted  in  a  whole  year  were 


THE  THREE  YEARS  121 

not  what  some  of  our  moderns  have  scattered  in  a  few  days. 
Her  total  debts  after  two  years  were  less   than  £20,000! 
Moreover,  careless  and  wasteful  as  the  girl  was  for  those 
well-ordered  times,  her  excesses  never  bore  an  appreciable 
proportion  to  the  scale  of  the  public  embarrassment.     Her 
difficulties  were  never  so  great  but  that  the  sale  of  a  farm 
or  two  could  meet  them.    Had  the  Bourbon  Crown  enjoyed- 
a  private  as  well  as  public  revenue,  her  lack  of  economy  t 
and  of  order  would  perhaps  never  have  been  heard  of. 

But  it  is  the  characteristic  of  any  morbid  condition 
that  the  slightest  irritant  produces  an  effect  vastly  beyond 
its  due  consequence.  The  financial  embarrassment  from 
which  the  Kingdom  suffered  may  or  may  not  have  been 
relievable  by  the  plain  and  harsh  methods  of  Turgot  — 
it  is  a  question  to  which  I  will  return  —  but  even  if  they 
were  so  relievable,  their  immediate  application  could  not 
but  be  an  aggravation  of  popular  suffering;  and  just  in  the 
years  when  increasing  economic  difficulty  and  sharp  econ- 
omic remedies  for  it  were  catching  the  public  between  two 
millstones  of  poverty  below  and  retrenchment  above,  the 
populace  had  presented  to  them,  upon  a  pinnacle  whence 
she  could  be  observed  on  every  side,  a  young  woman 
who  in  some  sense  summed  up  the  State,  and  yet  who, 
in  mere  externals  at  least,  showed  a  growing  disregard  for 
method  and  a  pursuit  of  every  emotion  that  might  distract 
her  from  what  the  French  thought  her  duty,  but  what  she 
knew  to  be  the  tragedy  of  her  marriage. 

The  mourning  of  the  Court  forbade  display  until  the 
autumn  of  1774,  and  though  with  the  autumn  and  the 
winter  there  was  some  relaxation  of  ancient  rules  and  some 
revolt  already  observable  upon  Marie  Antoinette's  part  yet 
there  against  the  fixed  and  inherited  rules  of  her  station, 


122  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

was  nothing  which  had  yet  seized  the  popular  imagin- 
ation nor  even  gravely  affected  her  position  within  the 
narrow  circle  of  her  equals.  It  was  not  until  the  next  year, 
1775,  that  the  error  and  the  misfortune  began. 

It  had  long  been  intended  that  her  brother,  the  Emperor 
Joseph,  should  visit  France,  and  by  his  more  active 
character  persuade  Louis  XVI.  to  an  operation  which 
he  perpetually  postponed.  The  repeated  adjournment 
of  this  visit  (which  was  to  resolve  so  many  doubts) 
was  among  the  fatal  elements  of  the  Queen's  early  life. 
In  the  place  of  that  sovereign,  the  youngest  child  of  the 
Hapsburgs,  Maximilian,  little  more  than  a  boy,  fat,  and 
what  would  have  been  called  in  a  lower  rank  of  society 
deficient,  waddled  into  the  astonished  court  at  La  Muette 
in  the  opening  of  February. 

The  accident  of  his  arrival  did  neither  the  Queen  nor 
the  Court  any  great  hurt  among  the  crowds  of  the  capital. 
His  startling  ignorance  and  heavy  lack  of  breeding  amused 
the  crowd;  they  were  glad  to  repeat  the  amusing  anecdotes 
of  his  awkwardness  as  later,  in  their  Republican  armies, 
they  were  glad  to  caricature  his  obesity  when  he  had 
achieved  the  ecclesiastical  dignity  of  a  princely  arch- 
bishopric. But  among  her  intimate  equals  the  visit  was 
disastrous.  The  Princes  of  the  Blood  insisted  upon  receiv- 
ing his  call  before  they  paid  their  court  to  him,  since  he 
was  travelling  incognito.  It  was  a  point  (to  them)  of  grave 
moment.  The  Queen  rubbed  it  in  with  spirit.  She  would 
not  let  him  pay  such  a  call.  She  told  them  that  her  brother 
"had  other  sights  to  see  in  Paris  and  could  put  off  seeing 
the  Princes  of  the  Blood."  The  King  stood  by  during  the 
quarrel,  irresolute,  upon  the  whole  supporting  his  wife. 
The  King's  brothers  for  the  moment  supported  her  also; 


THE  THREE   YEARS  123 

but  the  kernel  of  the  affair  lay  in  her  disregard  of  inherited 
tradition,  in  her  contempt  for  those  fine  shades  of  mutual 
influence  and  deference  which  to  the  French  are  all-impor- 
tant indications  of  authority,  but  which  to  her  were  mean- 
ingless extravagances  of  parade.  Chartres,  during  the  prog- 
ress of  what  he  thought  an  insult,  she  a  piece  of  common 
sense,  deliberately  left  the  Court,  publicly  showed  him- 
self in  Paris,  and  was  applauded  for  his  spirit. 

This  wilfulness,  this  picked  quarrel,  sprang  from  the 
same  root  as,  and  was  similar  to,  whatever  other  fevers 
disturbed  her  entry  into  her  twentieth  year. 

The  Queen  conceived  a  violent  affection  for  the  Princesse 
de  Lamballe,  a  young  woman  of  the  Blood,  but  Piedmon- 
tese,  the  widow  of  a  debauchee  —  a  simpering,  faithful, 
stupid,  sentimental  and  most  unfortunate  young  woman, 
often  gushing  in  her  joy,  next  in  grief  wringing  her  enormous 
hands.  It  was  an  attachment  almost  hysterical  and  subject  to 
extreme  fluctuations.  The  Queen  conceived  a  second  attach- 
ment, with  the  opening  of  this  year  1775  for  another  woman, 
as  good-natured  indeed,  but  more  solid  and  more  capable 
of  intrigue,  than  Madame  de  Lamballe,  the  Comtesse  de 
Polignac.  In  the  empty  society  of  the  one,  in  the  full  and 
babbling  coterie  of  the  other,  Marie  Antoinette  expended  the 
greater  part  of  her  energy.  Finding  to  hand,  as  it  were,  the 
De  Guemenees  (and  Madame  de  Guemenee  constitutionally 
fixed  as  "Governess  to  the  children  of  France" — chil- 
dren that  did  not  exist),  she  plunged  also  into  the 
Guemenee  set,  and  there  she  discovered,  for  the  first  time 
in  her  young  life,  a  powerful  drug  for  the  stimulation  of 
whatever  in  adventurous  youth  has  been  wounded  by  dis- 
appointment and  youth's  hot  despair  —  gambling.  The 
gambling  took  root  quickly  in  this  girl  who  hated  wine 


124  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

and  had  desired  so  much  of  life.  It  was  large  in  '75; 
in  '76  it  was  to  be  ruinous  to  her  watched  and  doled 
allowance. 

Meanwhile  the  tailors  and  the  milliners  and  all  the  ruck 
of  parasites  were  taking  advantage  of  the  new  reign  to  play 
extravagant  experiments  in  fashion,  to  build  fantastic 
head-dresses,  and  to  load  humanity  with  comic  feathers. 
She  did  not  create  such  novelties,  but  she  was  willing  to 
follow  them. 

The  young  bloods,  in  one  of  those  recurrent  fits  of  Anglo- 
mania to  which  the  wealthy  among  the  French  are  sub- 
ject, must  introduce  horse  -  racing.  She  passionately 
approved.  It  gave  her  gambling  the  familiarity  or  lack  of 
restraint  which  she  was  determined  to  breathe  for  the 
solution  of  her  ills;  it  gave  her  the  feeling  of  crowds  about 
her,  of  pulse  and  of  the  flesh. 

Young  Artois,  the  youngest  of  the  King's  brothers, 
because  he  was  the  most  vivacious  of  those  nearest  her, 
must  be  her  constant  companion.  Mercy  noted  his 
"shocking  familiarity";  he  feared  that  scandals  would  arise. 
They  did. 

Again,  as  the  new  reign  advanced,  her  unpolitical  and 
most  unwise  concern  for  personalities  showed  more  vividly 
than  ever.  Because  the  ambassador  in  London  was  in  her 
set  she  must  take  up  his  cause  with  a  sort  of  fury,  when 
he  was  accused  of  abusing  his  position  for  the  purpose  of 
commerce.  He  was  acquitted,  but,  much  more  than  the 
trial  or  any  of  its  incidents,  the  open  and  passionate  atti- 
tude of  the  Queen  struck  the  society  of  the  time.  So  in 
the  very  moment  of  the  coronation  she  again  openly  received 
Choiseul,  though  she  knew  that  he  could  never  return 
to  Court,  that  her  mother  and  all  Austria  disapproved. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  125 

Much  worse  than  all  of  these,  the  constant  jar  upon  her 
nerves  broke  down  a  certain  decent  reticence,  the  barrier  of 
silence  which  should,  always  in  a  woman  of  her  age,  and 
doubly  in  a  woman  of  her  position,  be  absolutely  immov- 
able. She  publicly  ridiculed  the  painful  infirmity  of  the 
King.  Her  sneers  at  his  incapacity  were  repeated;  they 
crept  into  malicious,  unprinted  songs ;  she  permitted  herself 
similar  confidences,  or  rather  publicities,  in  her  correspond- 
ence; she  wrote  them  with  her  own  hand,  and  there  is 
little  doubt  that  others  besides  those  to  whom  they  were 
addressed  saw  that  writing.  He,  poor  man,  went  on  pain- 
fully with  his  duty,  hour  by  hour  in  his  councils,  consider- 
ing the  realm,  distantly  fond  of  her,  but  necessarily  feeling 
in  her  presence  that  mixture  of  timidity,  generosity,  and 
shame,  the  secret  of  which  was  no  longer  private  to  his 
wife  and  him,  but,  through  her  lack  of  elementary  disci- 
pline, spreading  grotesquely  abroad  in  exaggerated  and 
false  rumour  to  the  world. 

So  much  had  been  accomplished  by  her  own  character 
and  destiny  when  a  full  year  had  passed  after  the  old  King's 
death.  She  had  made  the  Crown  a  subject  of  jest,  her 
character  suspect,  her  husband,  that  is,  the  foundation  of 
her  own  title,  ridiculous,  when  the  date  had  arrived  in  the 
summer  of  '75  for  the  solemn  coronation  of  Louis  at 
Rheims. 

Mercy,  with  an  inspiration  sharper  than  that  which 
diplomats  commonly  enjoy,  had  suggested  her  coronation 
side  by  side  with  that  of  the  King.  Such  a  ceremony 
might  have  retrieved  much.  Precedent  was  against  it, 
but  after  so  very  long  an  interval  precedent  was  weak; 
at  best  it  could  but  have  afforded  a  spiteful  and  small 
handle  for  the  enmities  which  Marie  Antoinette  had 


126  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

already  aroused.  She  had  but  to  insist,  or  rather  only  to 
understand,  and  her  fate  would  have  halted.  She  was 
indifferent.  The  miraculous  moment  when  high  ceremonial 
and  the  subtle  effect  of  historic  time  combined  to  impress 
and  to  transform  the  French  nation,  the  moment  of  the 
unction  of  the  King,  found  her  nothing  more  than  the  chief 
spectator  in  the  gallery  of  the  Cathedral  transept  looking 
down  upon  all  that  crowd  of  peers  and  officers  whose 
position  in  the  ceremony  was  exactly  fixed. 

She  had  come  in  to  Rheims  the  night  before  under  a 
brilliant  moon,  driving  in  her  carriage  as  might  any  private 
lady.  The  "chic"  of  such  an  entry  pleased  her.  She  had 
allowed  the  King  to  precede  her  by  some  days  —  and 
whatever  magic  attached  to  the  ritual  descended  upon  him 
alone,  and  left  her  unsupported  for  the  future.  Her  let- 
ter to  her  mother,  written  upon  the  morrow  of  the  occa- 
sion, shows  how  little  she  knew  what  she  had  missed.  The 
Court  returned  to  Versailles,  the  careless  vigour  of  her  life 
was  renewed,  the  thread  of  her  exaggerated  friendships 
and  her  exaggerated  repulsions  was  caught  up  again. 

When  her  young  sister-in-law  was  married  a  few  weeks 
later  to  the  heir  of  Piedmont  and  Savoy,  she  did  not  con- 
ceal her  relief  at  the  departure  from  court  of  this  child  with 
whom,  for  some  reason  or  another,  she  could  not  hit  it  off. 
When  Madame  de  Dillon,  with  her  Irish  beauty,  passed 
through  the  Court,  that  lady  moved  Marie  Antoinette  to  yet 
another  violent  friendship — luckily  of  short  duration.  As 
for  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe,  she  had  already  revived  for 
her  the  post  of  Superintendante  of  the  Queen's  Household 
(a  post  that  had  not  existed  for  thirty  years),  and  later 
she  insisted  upon  there  being  attached  to  it  the  salary 
(which  France  imagined  enormous)  of  £6,000  a  year. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  127 

It  is  of  great  interest  to  note  that  public  dissipation  or 
abandon  of  this  kind,  glowing  familiarities,  long-lit  and 
brilliant  nights,  an  ardent  pursuit  of  what  had  become 
to  her  a  very  necessity  of  change  —  all,  in  a  word,  that  was 
beginning  to  fix  her  subjects'  eyes  upon  her  doubtfully 
and  not  a  little  to  offend  the  mass  of  the  nobility  around 
her,  all  that  was  found  in  her  insufficient  to  the  niceties 
and  balance  of  the  French  temper,  was  easily  excused  by 
foreign  opinion.  Just  that  something  which  separates  the 
French  from  their  neighbours  was  lacking  to  the  foreign 
observance  of  this  foreign  woman.  Her  carriage,  which  to 
the  French  was  a  trifle  theatrical,  seemed  to  foreigners 
queenly ;  her  lively  temper,  which  the  French  had  begun  to 
find  forward,  was  for  the  foreigner  an  added  charm. 

There  is  no  need  to  recall  the  rhetoric  of  Burke,  for 
Burke  was  not  by  birth  or  training  competent  to  judge; 
but  Horace  Walpole,  who  was  present  that  very  summer 
at  the  Court  of  Versailles,  and  saw  the  Queen  in  all  her 
young  active  presence  at  her  sister-in-law's  wedding-feast, 
writes  with  something  of  sincerity,  and,  what  is  more,  with 
something  for  once  of  heart  in  his  words.  He  thinks  there 
never  was  so  gracious  or  so  lovely  a  being. 

One  judgment  I,  at  least,  would  rather  have  recovered 
than  any  of  theirs.  It  has  not  been  communicated.  I 
mean  that  of  Doctor  Johnson.  For  Doctor  Johnson  some 
months  later  stood  by  the  side  of  his  young  girl  friend, 
behind  the  balustrade  at  Fontainebleau,  watching  curiously 
with  his  aged  and  imperfect  eyes  this  young  Queen  at  the 
public  ceremony  of  the  Sunday  Feast.  The  old,  fat,  wheezy 
man,  who  now  seems  to  us  England  incarnate,  stood  there 
in  the  midst  of  the  public  crowd  behind  the  railing,  block- 
ing its  shuffling  way  as  it  defiled  before  royalty  dining, 


128  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

and  took  in  all  the  scene.  The  impression  upon  a  man 
of  such  philosophy  must  have  been  very  deep.  I  believe 
we  have  no  record  of  that  impression  remaining.1 

Though  Marie  Antoinette's  carriage  and  her  manner  had 
founded  of  her  so  beneficent  a  legend  abroad  and  had 
begun  in  her  new  home  so  much  of  her  future  disaster, 
with  those  who  knew  her  most  intimately  and  who  were  of 
her  own  blood,  with  the  Hapsburgs  of  Vienna,  her  conduct, 
certainly  not  queenly,  seemed  not  even  tragic.  They  scolded 
sharply,  and  the  Emperor,  her  brother,  crowned  a  series  of 
violent  notes  by  one  so  violent  that  Maria  Theresa  kept  it 
back.  To  her  childlessness  (which  was  for  them  a  fault  in 
her) ,  to  her  conduct  (which  her  own  family  who  had  known 
her  as  a  child  exaggerated  at  such  a  distance)  was  added 
the  exasperation  of  remembering  that  with  some  elementary 
caution  she  might  have  acted  as  the  agent  of  the  allied 
Austrian  Court  whose  daughter  she  was ;  they  were  angered 
in  Vienna  to  see  that,  instead  of  so  acting,  she  wasted  her 
position  in  private  spites  and  private  choices. 

In  fine,  when  the  Day  of  the  Dead  came  round  and  the 
leaves  of  '75  were  falling,  she  could  look  back  from  her 
twentieth  birthday  to  her  accession,  and  the  view  was  one 
of  eighteen  months  of  mental  chaos  wherein  one  emotion 
rapidly  succeeded  another,  each  sought  for  the  purpose  of 
,  distraction  and  oblivion,  and  of  feeding  in  some  sort  of  fire- 
work way  that  appetite  for  life  which  Louis  could  not 
nourish  with  a  steady  flame.  With  the  next  year  further 
elements  were  to  be  added  to  those  existing  elements  of 
dissipation.  The  foundations  of  the  future,  which  she  had 
already  levelled  out,  were  to  be  strengthened.  The  public 

1  The  life  of  Doctor  Johnson  has  become  an  object  of  such  widespread  national  study  that  more  than  one 
reader  may  be  acquainted  with  his  judgment  of  the  scene.  If  it  exists,  it  should  be  published  to  the  advantage 
of  history. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  129 

judgment  of  her  was  to  become  more  apparent,  and  the 
legend  which  at  last  destroyed  her  was  to  take  a  firmer  root. 

The  year  1776,  for  ever  famous  in  the  general  history  of 
the  world,  was  the  climax  and  the  turning-point  of  this 
early  exuberance  and  excess.  In  its  first  days,  during  the 
hard  winter  which  marked  the  turn  of  the  year,  she  had 
begun  amusements  which  for  the  first  time  permitted  her 
to  cross  the  barrier  which  divides  the  reproach  of  one's 
intimates  from  public  scandal.  Her  play  had  grown  from 
mere  extravagant  gambling  to  dangerous  indebtedness,  and 
she  had  been  bitten  by  the  love  of  jewels,  especially  of 
diamonds.  In  this  year,  too,  the  simple  and  somewhat 
empty  friendship  which  she  still  slightly  bore  to  Madame 
de  Lamballe  was  finally  replaced  by  more  violent  caprices ; 
she  began  to  associate  with  the  powerful  Guemenees,  with 
the  gentle  but  subtle  and  intriguing  Countess  of  Polignac. 

Her  indiscretion  rose  continually.  In  February  she  was 
seen  with  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  whirling  over  the  snow 
into  Paris,  without  an  escort,  as  a  private  woman  might, 
to  the  disgust  and  the  hatred  of  the  crowd. 

The  exhilaration  of  the  cold  —  for  her  who  was  from 
Vienna  —  the  exhilaration  of  her  twentieth  year,  her  love 
of  merry  domination  over  the  timid  little  tall  companion, 
whom  she  so  soon  was  to  abandon,  drove  her  from  audacity 
to  audacity.  Her  sledges,  which  had  been  but  a  domestic 
scandal  at  Versailles,  dared  to  reach  Sevres,  St.  Cloud; 
they  crossed  the  river,  because  the  hunting  wood  of 
Boulogne  invited  them.  Upon  one  fatal  morning  she 
traversed  that  last  screen  and  shot  through  Paris  on  her 
shining  toy. 

The  sledge  was  daringly,  impudently  alone.  There  was 
no  guard,  no  decent  covering  for  royalty,  no  dignity  of 


130  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

pace  or  even  of  ornament;  its  pace  was  a  flash,  and  its 
high  gilding  a  theatrical  decor;  mixing  with  that  flash  and 
that  gilding  was  the  jangling  of  a  hundred  little  bells. 

The  streets  were  all  aghast  at  such  a  sight.  Sevres  and 
the  villages  round  Versailles  had  stared,  bewildered,  to 
see  a  Queen  go  by  in  such  a  fashion;  but  Paris  was  too 
great  to  be  merely  bewildered,  and  Paris  grew  angry,  as 
might  an  individual  at  a  personal  insult  offered. 

The  next  month  saw  her  first  reckless  purchase  of  gems; 
she  pledged  her  name  for  .£16,000,  and  acquired  in  exchange 
of  that  debt  diamonds  not  only  expensive  beyond  the 
means  of  her  purse,  but  unworthy  of  her  rank  and  of  the 
traditions  of  her  office. 

To  such  follies  she  added  her  personal  interference  in 
the  matter  of  Turgot.  That  bright-eyed,  narrow,  intelli- 
gent, and  most  un-Christian  man,  had  missed  the  problem 
ready  to  his  hands.  In  time  of  war,  with  a  good  army  and 
a  soldier  behind  him,  he  might  have  solved  it;  in  a  time 
of  luxury,  misery,  and  peace  he  could  not.  In  the  very 
days  when  he  was  propounding  his  theories  of  unfettered 
exchange  and  of  direct  taxation  for  the  salvation  of  the 
Monarchy,  the  harvest  of  '75  had  failed.  In  the  one  ex- 
ceptional moment  of  famine  when  interference  with  trade 
was  certainly  necessary  to  French  markets,  his  free  trade 
doctrine  was  imposed.  A  popular  hatred  rose  against 
him,  and  he  was  hated  not  only  by  the  populace,  who  felt 
the  practical  effects  of  his  economic  idealism,  but  by  the 
rich  handful  who  were  still  devout  and  who  could  not 
tolerate  his  contempt  for  the  Faith,  by  the  corrupt  who 
could  not  tolerate  his  economy,  and  by  the  vivacious  who 
could  not  tolerate  his  sobriety.  His  rapid  and  funda- 
mental reforms,  moreover,  were  opposed  by  the  Parlement 


- 

THE  THREE  YEARS  131 

of  Paris 1  as  by  a  wall.  They  refused  to  register  the 
edicts.  He  had  still  great  influence  with  the  King,  though 
hardly  with  any  other  effective  power  in  the  State,  and  in 
the  month  of  March  the  King  in  a  Bed  of  Justice  com- 
pelled the  Parlement  to  register  Turgot' s  decrees  and 
give  them  the  force  of  law.  It  registered,  them;  but  none 
the  less  Turgot  was  doomed. 

Mercy,  who  saw  very  clearly  that  the  man  must  go,  but 
who  also  saw  clearly  the  extreme  danger  that  the  Queen 
ran  in  taking  upon  herself  any  part  in  his  going,  did  all 
that  his  influence  could  command  to  prevent  her  inter- 
ference. He  spent  his  energy  and  his  considerable  persua- 
sion in  vain.  The  one  motive  force  and  the  only  one  that 
could  persuade  her  to  public  action  had  already  stirred 
the  Queen ;  she  believed  herself  to  have  received  a  personal 
affront;  the  Cabinet  had  recalled  a  favourite  from  the 
Embassy  of  St.  James's.  The  girl  was  determined  upon 
revenge,  and  because  Turgot,  as  Comptroller-General, 
showed  most  prominently  in  the  Cabinet,  it  was  upon  Tur- 
got that  her  wrath  fell,  or  rather  it  was  Turgot  falling  from 
power  whom  she  precipitated  by  her  final  influence.  Upon 
the  10th  of  May,  Guines,  whom  the  Cabinet  had  recalled 
from  London,  was  raised  to  a  Duchy  in  a  public  note;  by 
the  12th,  Maurepas  had  told  the  Comptroller-General 
that  his  office  was  vacant,  and  Marie  Antoinette  talked 
wildly  of  sending  him  to  the  Bastille. 

There  was  at  this  time  in  Paris  a  man  called  Necker 
with  whom  history  would  have  little  concern  had  not  the 
accident  of  the  Revolution  later  thrown  his  undetermined 
features  into  the  limelight.  He  was  a  product  of  Geneva, 

1  It  should  be  made  clear,  though  it  is  elementary,  that  the  Parlement  of  Paris,  by  nature  a  supreme  court  of 
law,  exercised  also  the  anomalous  but  traditional  function  of  registrar  of  royal  decrees.  Nor  was  a  law  a  law 
until  this  body  had  consented  to  enroll  it  or  had  been  overcome  by  a  grave,  rare  and  solemn  public  ritual  of 
the  King's  called  "a  Bed  of  Justice." 


132  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  money-dealer,  therefore,  and  a  Calvinist  by  birth  and 
trade  —  in  no  way  by  individual  conviction,  for  his  energies 
had  long  been  directed  to  the  accumulation  into  his  own 
hands  of  the  wealth  of  others.  His  reputation  as  a  solid 
business  man  was  therefore  high,  and  he  was  very  rich;  of 
moral  reputation,  as  the  Catholic  French  understand  the 
term,  he  had  none.1  His  dealings  with  the  treasury  had 
brought  his  name  forward,  and  in  a  few  months,  under  a 
different  title,  he  replaced  Turgot  at  the  head  of  the  embar- 
rassed finances  of  the  country!  .  .  .  Societies  in  disso- 
lution do  such  things. 

His  conception  of  reform  was  what  one  might  expect  from 
such  a  lineage.  He  cooked  the  public  accounts,  flattered  all 
to  remain  in  power,  was  hopelessly  void  of  any  plan,  and, 
to  meet  the  crisis,  just  borrowed:  the  first  of  modern  stock- 
jobbers to  conduct  a  state,  and  the  model  to  all  others. 
He  was  destined  to  become  a  sgrt  of  symbol  of  liberty  .  .  . 
and  therein  he  is  an  example  to  democracy  as  well  as  to 
money-changers . 

To  the  signal  folly  of  precipitating  Turgot's  fa!l  the 
Queen  was  content  to  add  further  marks  of  excess.  As 
though  her  purchases  earlier  in  the  year  had  not  been 
sufficient,  she  must  buy  bracelets  now  worth  three  years  of 
her  income  —  bracelets,  the  news  of  which  reached  Vienna 
—  and  she  must  give  rein  to  every  conceivable  indulgence 
in  the  passion  of  gambling.  All  the  world  talked  of  it, 
and  all  that  summer,  as  the  influence  of  her  new  friends 
rose  and  as  her  careless  excitement  reached  its  limit, 
the  fever  grew. 

1  His  vivacious  and  ugly  daughter  was  to  be  a  catch  famous  throughout  Europe.  Years  later  Fersen — of  all  - 
men! — was  suggested  to  her.  Pitt  in  '85  had  a  bite  at  her  ill-gotten  dowry.  Luckily  for  the  girl,  she  escaped 
him,  but  she  married  De  Stafil,  became  famous,  wrote  her  lively  and  didactic  comments  on  the  Revolution,  gre^, 
uglier  stillvshowed  a  small  black  moustache,  at  last  wore  a.  turban  and  drove  Napoleon  to  desgaiiu 


THE  THREE  YEARS  133 

At  Marly,  during  the  summer  visit  of  the  Court,  later 
in  the  year  at  Fontainebleau,  she  carried  on  the  scandal. 
One  autumn  night  in  this  last  place  bankers  from 
Paris  kept  the  faro  tables  open  for  thirty-six  hours;  they 
were  the  hours  before  her  birthday,  and  the  Mass  of  All 
Saints  was  held  before  a  Court,  pale  and  crumpled  with 
the  lack  of  sleep.  The  morrow,  her  twenty-first  birthday, 
was  sour  with  the  memory  of  the  reproach  against  that 
debauch.  The-  Court  returned  for  the  winter  to  Ver- 
sailles, and  Maria  Theresa  determined  that  it  was  time 
for  the  Queen's  brother,  the  Emperor  Joseph,  to  make  the 
journey  he  had  long  promised,  and  to  stem  these  rapids 
which  threatened  to  become  a  cataract  in  which  every- 
thing might  be  swept  away.  Her  scolding  letters  to  her 
daughter  were  accompanied  by  active  plans  for  the  jour- 
ney of  her  son.  She  expected,  and  not  without  reason, 
that  that  son's  advent  would  change  all,  for  she  knew  that 
he  would  have  the  direct  mission  to  persuade  Louis  to  an 
operation,  to  relieve  the  imperfect  marriage  of  the  burden 
that  pressed  upon  it,  and  to  remove  from  the  life  of  that 
young  wife  the  intolerable  nervous  oppression  whence  all 
this  increasing  violence  proceeded. 

It  is  to  the  Emperor's  journey,  therefore,  that  all  one's 
attention  should  be  directed  as  one  reads  her  life  from  the 
closing  days  of  1776  to  his  appearance  in  Paris,  after 
repeated  delays,  in  the  spring  of  the  following  year. 

Meanwhile  that  other  spirit  whose  action  was  to  come 
in  upon  her  life,  America,  was  born.  The  week  that  had 
seen  Turgot's  dismissal  had  seen  passed  in  Philadelphia 
the  Pennsylvania  Resolution  of  Separation  from  the  Eng- 
lish Crown,  and  in  the  keener  intellectual  life  of  Virginia  it 
had  seen  produced  upon  the  same  day  the  first  statement 


134  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  those  general  principles  which  the  Colonies  had 
drawn  from  Rousseau,  and  upon  which  were  to  be  based, 
for  whatever  good  or  evil  fortunes  still  attended  it,  the 
democracy  of  our  time.  The  revolt  grew  from  those  skir- 
mishes of  '75  that  had  begun  the  civil  war,  to  the  Sepa- 
ratist decisions  of  '76,  the  strain  upon  England's  tenure 
of  her  empire  increased,  and  Vergennes  all  the  while  watched 
closely,  hoping  from  that  embarrassment  to  find  at  one 
moment  or  another  the  opportunity  for  relieving  his  coun- 
try from  the  permanent  threat  of  an  English  war. 

It  was  a  difficult  and  a  perilous  game.  A  British  suc- 
cess might  be,  or  rather  would  be,  followed  by  swift  venge- 
ance against  the  embarrassed  and  fettered  Crown  of 
France.  The  Cabinet  of  Versailles  would  need  allies 
against  what  was  believed  to  be  an  all-powerful  navy  and 
for  eighteen  months  Vergennes  was  working  to  obtain  these 
allies,  in  spite  of  the  terror  which  the  British  fleet  inspired. 
This  policy,  whose  ultimate  results  were  to  be  so  consid- 
erable and  so  unexpected,  took  a  new  shape  upon  a  cer- 
tain day  which  should  perhaps  be  more  memorable  in 
the  history  of  the  United  States  than  any  other.  I  mean 
the  28th  of  November  of  this  year  1776. 

Early  that  morning,  the  weather  being  clear  and  the  wind 
southerly,  a  pilot  from  the  rocks  of  Belle  Isle  had  made 
out  three  ships  in  the  offing,  but  they  were  hull  down; 
later,  he  saw  one  bearing  a  strange,  quite  unknown  flag. 
He  sailed  towards  it.  The  colours  were  those  of  the  new 
Republic,  and  the  stars  and  stripes  flew  above  a  sloop  of 
war  that  carried  Franklin;  she  had  with  her  two  English 
prizes  for  companions.  Franklin  landed.  Within  three 
weeks  he  was  in  Paris,  and  by  the  first  week  of  the  New 
Year  he  was  at  Passy  in  the  suburbs,  the  guest  of  Cttaumopt, 


THE  THREE  YEARS  135 

from  whose  great  house  and  wide  park  proceeded  the  care- 
ful intrigue  by  which  the  Thirteen  States  were  finally  estab- 
lished in  their  Independence. 

All  who  can  pretend  to  history  have  respect  for  Ver- 
gennes,  but  that  respect  is  far  heightened  by  the  close  read- 
ing of  what  followed. 

Alone  of  the  European  States  Great  Britain  could  not 
be  balanced  but  could  balance.  Great  Britain  was  secure 
among  them  and  their  insecurity.  Great  Britain  alone  in 
her  growing  monopoly  of  industry  and  in  her  impregnable 
self-sufficiency,  economic  and  military,  could  not  be  pinned 
down  into  a  diplomatic  system;  she  alone  could  afford  to 
scorn  alliance,  and  could  in  a  moment  change  from  friend 
to  foe  and  strike  at  any  exposed  and  vulnerable  part  of  the 
European  group  —  especially  at  a  maritime  neighbour. 
The  British  army  maintained  a  proved  excellence  of  a 
hundred  years;  it  was  particularly  famous  for  its  endur- 
ance; its  records  of  capitulation  were  rarer  than  those  of 
any  other ;  it  could  afford  to  be  small ;  its  infantry  stood  fire 
brutally  and  could  charge  after  losses  that  would  have 
been  fatal  to  its  rivals;  it  had  for  framework  the  squires 
and  the  yeomen  of  solid  countrysides,  for  material  the  still 
manly  remains  of  a  peasantry  in  the  English  shires,  the 
Highlands,  whose  native  language,  diet,  and  race  were 
at  that  time  corrupted  by  nothing  more  alien  than  a  little 
garrison.  Finally,  there  was  then  available  to  the  full  for 
purposes  of  war  the  vigour  of  an  as  yet  unruined  and  not 
yet  wholly  alienated  Irish. 

A  navy,  adequate  in  numbers,  but  no  drain  upon  the 
productive  power  of  the  nation,  gave  mobility  to  this 
force,  the  soil  of  these  Islands  fed  the  people  upon  it,  and 
meanwhile  an  industry,  textile  and  metallic,  such  as  no 


136  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

other  country  dreamed  of,  supplied  an  increasing  and 
overflowing  resource  for  war.  It  is  but  a  hundred  and 
thirty  years  since  things  were  thus.  A  vast  change  has 
passed,  and  it  is  difficult  for  the  modern  student,  per- 
plexed and  anxious  for  the  future  of  his  country,  to  enter 
into  the  international  policy  of  his  fathers;  yet  must  he 
grasp  it  if  he  is  to  understand  what  a  revolution  was  effected 
by  the  issue  of  the  American  War;  for  it  is  probable  that 
when  the  first  complete  survey  of  modern  Europe  is  taken, 
the  separation  of  the  American  colonies  will  estab- 
lish a  fixed  date  which  marks  not  only  the  division  between 
the  monarchical  and  the  beaurocratic,  the  old  and  the  new 
Europe,  but  also,  in  our  province,  the  division  between 
what  had  been  England  and  what  later  came  to  be  called 
"the  Empire"  -with  the  destinies  befitting  such  a  title, 
and  the  colonies  to  which  it  is  attached. 

Vergennes  saw  that  this  England,  free  upon  the  flank 
of  his  embarrassed  country,  was  now  suddenly  engaged  in 
the  most  entangling  of  nets,  an  unpopular  and  distant 
civil  war.  He  knew  that  with  a  Protestant  population  of 
her  own  blood  (at  that  time  the  States  were  in  philosophy 
wholly  Protestant,  in  tradition  entirely  English)  would  only 
be  attacked  by  the  governing  families  with  'the  utmost 
reluctance.  There  was  no  fear  of  extreme  rigours,  or  of 
sharp,  cruel,  and  decisive  depression;  there  was  sympathy 
and  relationship  on  both  sides.  Therefore  the  war  would 
drag. 

Vergennes  had  seen,  two  years  before,  the  little  English 
garrison  permitting  the  inhabitants  to  arm  and  drill  without 
interference;  he  knew  that  opinion  in  England  was  divided 
upon  the  rebellion.  His  whole  attention  was  concentrated 
upon  the  prolongation  of  that  struggle  and  upon  postpon- 


THE  THREE  YEARS  137 

ing,  to  the  last,  the  intervention  of  France.    His  attention, 
so  given,  was  successful,  and  he  secured  his  object. 

At  first  and  for  as  long  as  might  be  he  would  support, 
unseen,  the  weaker  of  the  combatants.  He  received  Frank- 
lin, though  privately;  he  refused  ships  or  a  declaration 
of  war.  Arms  and  ammunition  he  liberally  supplied  — 
but  he  did  so  through  a  private  and  civilian  person,  whom 
he  vigorously  denounced  in  public,  who  had  to  go  through 
the  form  of  payment  from  the  United  States,  as  might  any 
other  dealer,  and  who  was  very  nearly  compelled  to  go 
through  the  form  of  receiving  heavy  punishment  as  well. 
The  private  firm  so  chosen  was  " Roderigo  Hortalez  et  Cie"; 
the  modern  cheat  of  anonymity  in  commerce  had  begun, 
and  Roderigo  Hortalez  was,  in  reality,  that  same  shifty, 
witty,  courageous,  and  unsatisfied  man  who  had  already 
played  upon  Versailles  and  Vienna  and  whose  pen  was  later 
to  deliver  so  deep  a  thrust  at  the  Monarchy.  Caron,  or,  to 
call  him  by  the  title  of  nobility  he  had  purchased,  "De 
Beaumarchais." 


While  Vergennes  was  acting  thus,  every  effort  was  being 
made  at  Vienna  to  advance  the  journey  of  the  Emperor: 
postponed  from  January  to  February,  from  February  to 
March,  that  journey  was  at  last  undertaken,  and  with  the 
first  days  of  April,  1777,  Joseph  was  present  upon  French 
soil,  and  driving  down  the  Brussels  road  towards  Paris. 

But  all  that  while,  in  spite  of  his  advent,  the  rush  of  the 
Court  had  increased,  and  to  the  twenty  other  fashions  and 
excitements  of  the  moment  one  more  had  been  added  — 
enlistment  for  America.  The  youngster,  who  was  typical 
of  all  that  wealthy  youth,  not  yet  sobered  or  falsified  by 


138  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

fame,  La  Fayette,  was  determined  to  go;  and  almost  as  a 
pastime,  though  it  was  a  generous  and  an  enthusiastic  one, 
the  American  Revolution  was  the  theme  of  the  Court  in 
general.  It  became  the  theme  of  the  Polignac  clique  in 
particular,  a  theme  sometimes  rivalling  the  high  interest 
of  the  cards  or  lending  an  added  splendour  to  fantastic 
head-dress  and  to  incongruous  jewels. 

And  the  Queen  meanwhile,  quite  lost,  pushed  the  pace 
of  all  the  throng  about  her,  despairing  of  any  remedy  to  that 
evil  which  her  brother  was  posting  to  reform. 

If  Fersen  had  been  there! 


Upon  Friday  evening,  the  18th  of  April,  the  Emperor 
Joseph  drove  past  the  barrier  of  St.  Denis  and  entered 
Paris.  It  was  already  dark,  but  the  stoic  was  in  time 
for  dinner.  He  was  in  strict  incognito,  that  he  might 
be  the  more  admired,  and  had  given  out  the  arrival  of 
"Count  Falkenstein"  to  all  the  world.  He  slept  in  the 
humblest  way  at  his  Embassy ;  he  had  hired  two_plain  rooms 
in  Versailles  by  letter  —  at  a  hotel  called  "the  Hotel  of  the 
Just,"  presumably  Huguenot;  next  day  he  paraded  as  The 
Early  Riser  and  was  off  to  Versailles  before  the  gentry 
were  out  of  bed :  the  whole  thing  was  as  theatrical  as  could 
be.  He  wished  to  meet  his  sister  alone  —  but  he  let  every- 
body know  it.  He  came  up  to  her  room  by  a  private  stair 
—  and  spoke  of  it  as  an  act  of  simplicity  and  virtue.  The 
man  was  of  the  kind  to  whom  —  most  unhappily  for  them 
and  their  founder  —  Marcus  Aurelius  provides  a  model. 
His  certitudes  were  in  words  or  negations;  his  pride  in 
things  facile  and  dry;  his  judgments  vapid,  determined, 
superficial  and  false  —  in  a  manner  Prussian  without  the 


THE  EMPEROR  JOSEPH  II. 

From  the  tapestry  portrait  woven  for  Marie  Antoinette 
and  recently  restored  to  Versailles 


THE  THREE  YEARS  139 

Prussian  minuteness.  In  a  manner  French,  but  with 
none  of  the  French  clear  depth  and  breadth.  Of  hearty 
Germany  he  had  nothing;  and  among  all  the  instruments 
of  action  designed  in  Gaul  he  could  choose  out  only  one, 
the  trick  of  sharp  command,  which  the  accident  of  despotic 
power  permitted  him  to  use  over  a  hodge-podge  of  cities 
and  tongues. 

The  task  before  him,  which  was  the  re-establishment  at 
Versailles  of  the  interests  of  Austria,  comprised  two  parts: 
first,  he  must  counsel  or  compel  the  Queen  —  who  stood  for 
Austria  at  Versailles  —  to  such  conduct  and  dignity  as 
would  permit  her  to  exercise  permanent  political  power; 
secondly,  and  much  more  important,  he  must  force  the 
King  to  that  operation  from  which*  he  so  shrank  and  yet 
by  which  alone  the  succession  of  the  Crown  through 
Marie  Antoinette  could  be  assured. 

For  the  first  of  these  tasks,  the  reform  of  his  sister's  com 
duct,  Joseph's  empty  character,  without  humour  and  with-f 
out  religion,  was  wholly  insufficient  —  nay,  it  provoked  the 
opposite  of  its  intention.  The  obvious  truth  of  his  harsh 
criticism  moved  the  Queen,  but  his  bad  manners,  his  public 
rebuke,  offended  her  more.  His  precise  (and  written!) 
instructions  forced  upon  her  one  irksome  and  priggish 
month  of  affected  rigidity;  she  did  but  react  with  the  more 
violence  from  the  absurd  restraint.  With  the  second  and 
more  positive  task  he  was  more  fortunate.  His  brutal 
questions,  his  direct  affirmation  and  counsel,  his  precise 
instructions,  all  conveyed  in  the  sergeant-major  manner 
which  is  of  such  effect  upon  the  doubtful  or  the  lethargic, 
accomplished  their  end.  Louis  inclined  to  the  side  which 
had  for  now  three  years  urged  medical  interference ;  he  sub- 
mitted to  an  operation,  and  the  principal  question  at  issue 


140  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

for  two  great  States  was  in  this  secret  manner  accom- 
plished: it  was  the  one  success,  the  only  one,  of  Joseph's 
tactless  and  unwise  career.  It  was  of  the  highest  conse- 
.quence  to  him  and  his  house,  and  all  Europe;  for,  his 
counsels  once  obeyed,  the  maternity  of  Marie  Antoinette 
•was  ultimately  sure.  When  the  Queen  should  have  borne 
a  child  there  could  but  follow  the  rage  of  disappointed 
successors,  a  secure  and  increasing  influence  upon  her  part 
over  her  husband,  through  this  the  antagonism  of  the 
monarchy  of  the  nation,  and  at  last  the  Revolution  and 
all  its  wars. 

The  reader  may  inquire  the  precise  date  of  so  momen- 
tous a  detail.  It  is  impossible  to  fix  it  until  (if  it  still  exist) 
the  document  once  in  the  hands  of  Lassone  be  published; 
but  we  can  fix  limits  within  which  the  operation  must  have 
taken  place.  It  must  have  been  within  that  summer  of  1777, 
in  one  of  three  months,  June,  July,  or  August ;  probably 
In  late  August  or  the  beginning  of  September  It  was  cer- 
Itainly  later  than  the  14th  of  May,  when,  according  to  Mercy, 
the  private  interviews  upon  the  matter  between  Joseph  and 
Louis  were  still  unfinished.  Marie  Antoinette's  letter  of 
June  16th  makes  it  probably  later  than  that  date.  A 
phrase  of  Maria  Theresa's  on  the  31st  of  July,  refer- 
ring to  news  of  the  15th  (the  last  news  from  Mercy), 
makes  it  possible  that  she  thought  all  accomplished 
by  the  15th  of  July.  A  phrase  of  Mercy's  on  the  15th 
of  August  makes  it  more  probable  still.  By  the  10th 
of  September  a  phrase  used  by  Marie  Antoinette  in  her 
correspondence  with  Maria  Theresa  makes  it  certain.1 

Compared  with  this  capital  consequence  of  his  journey 
the  rest  of  Joseph's  actions,  opinions,  and  posings  in  France 

l  See  Appendix  A. 


THE  THREE  YEARS  141 

are  indeed  of  slight  importance.  His  affectation  of  retire- 
ment and  simplicity,  his  common  cabs,  his  perpetual  appear- 
ance in  public  and  as  perpetual  pretence  of  complaint  at 
his  popularity  are  the  tedious  trappings  of  such  men.  In 
some  things  he  was  real  enough ;  in  his  acute  annoyance  with 
the  Queen's  set,  for  instance  —  especially  with  Madame  de 
Guemenee,  and  her  late  hours,  high  play  and  familiar, 
disrespectful  tones.  He  was  sincere,  too,  in  his  astounding 
superficiality  of  judgment;  he  was  keen  on  science,  eager 
for  the  Academies,  and  in  that  scientific  world  of  Paris 
which  boasted  Lavoisier  and  the  immortal  Lamark,  dis- 
covered that  "when  one  looks  close,  nothing  profound  or 
useful  is  being  done." 

At  the  end  of  May  he  left  for  a  tour  in  the  French  prov- 
inces. His  ineptitudes  continue.  He  has  left  notes  of 
his  opinions  for  us  to  enjoy.  He  judges  the  army,  and 
condemns  it  —  all  except  the  pipe-clay  and  white  facings 
of  the  Artois  Regiment.  That  pleased  him.  He  saw 
nothing  of  the  cannon  which  were  to  break  Austria  and 
capture  a  woman  of  his  house  for  Napoleon.  He  judges 
the  navy  after  a  minute  attention,  and  finds  it  —  on  the  eve 
of  the  American  War! — thoroughly  bad.  One  thing  he 
does  note  clearly,  that  Provence,  the  King's  brother,  has 
been  going  through  France  in  state,  as  though  sure  of  the 
succession.  After  what  had  passed  at  Versailles,  such 
expectations  on  the  part  of  Louis  XVI. 's  brother  must  have 
bred  in  Joseph  a  mixture  of  anxiety  and  amusement. 

He  returned  to  Vienna,  and  began  to  address  himself 
to  his  next  failure  in  policy  and  judgment  —  he  coveted 
Bavaria.  The  death  of  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  would  raise 
the  issue  of  his  succession.  That  death  was  approaching, 
and  Joseph  began  to  intrigue  through  Mercy,  through  his 


142  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

piother,  and  as  best  he  could  through  his  sister,  for  the 
succession  to  the  Duchy  and  for  the  support  of  France 
against  Prussia  in  his  outworn,  out-dated  ambition.  While 
he  still  played  with  such  toys,  much  larger  forces  were  ready 
to  enter  the  scene,  and  changes  that  would  make  the  little 
balances  of  German  States  forgotten;  for  as  that  summer 
of  1777  heightened,  dry,  intensely  hot,  and  as  all  the  air  of 
the  life  around  Versailles  was  cleared  by  the  new  intimate 
relations  of  the  Queen  and  her  husband;  as  the  chief  domes- 
tic problem  of  the  reign  was  resolved,  as  it  became  increas- 
ingly certain  that  the  royal  marriage  would  soon  be  a  true 
marriage  and  the  way  to  the  succession  secure,  there  had 
come  also  the  certitude  of  war  with  England  in  the  matter 
of  the  American  colonies. 

It  is  upon  this  latter  certitude  that  attention  must  now 
be  fixed,  before  one  can  turn  to  the  tardy  accomplishment 
of  the  Queen's  hopes  for  an  heir.  The  foreign  policy  of 
that  moment  is  essential  to  a  comprehension  of  her  fate, 
for  upon  the  unexpected  turn  of  that  unexpected  conflict  with 
Great  Britain  was  to  depend  the  fatal  respite  which  des- 
tiny granted  to  the  French  Monarchy:  a  respite  of  years, 
during  whose  short  progress  the  financial  tangle  became 
hopeless,  the  Queen's  ill-repute  fixed,  and  the  Crown's  last 
cover  of  ceremony  destroyed. 

I  say  there  had  come  a  certitude  of  war  with  England. 

Of  three  things  one:  either  England  would  reduce  the 
rebels ;  or,  having  failed  so  to  reduce  them,  she  would  com- 
promise with  them  for  the  maintenance  of  at  least  a  nom- 
inal sovereignty;  [or,  she  would  wholly  fail  and  would  be 
compelled  wholly  to  retire,  jn  the  first  case  it  must  be 
her  immediate  business  to  attjack  the  French  Government 
whose  secret  aid  had  alone  made  the  prolongation  of  rebel- 


THE  THREE  YEARS  143 


lion  possible;  inutile  second  case,  with  still  more  security, 
and  a  still  more  confident  power,  she  could  attack  an  enemy 
which,  because  it  had  not  dared  openly  to  help  her  foes,  had 
earned  their  contempt  and  lost  its  own  self-confidence. 
In  the  third  case  she  would  find  herself  free  from  all  em- 
barrassment and  at  liberty  to  destroy  a  rival  marine,  whose 
inferiority  was  incontestable  but  whose  presence  had  been 
sufficient  to  embarrass  her  complete  control  of  the  North 
Atlantic,  and  to  sustain  —  however  disingenuously  —  her 
rebellious  subjects. 

In  any  one  of  these  three  issues  a  war  with  England 
must  come.  But  these  three  issues  had  not  an  equal  chance 
of  achievement.  A  complete  victory  of  the  British  troops, 
probable  as  it  was,  could  hardly  result  in  a  permanent 
military  occupation  of  a  vast  district,  English  in  blood  and 
speaking  the  English  tongue.  A  complete  defeat  of  British 
regulars  at  the  hands  of  the  varied  and  uncertain  minority 
of  colonists,  and  the  acknowledgment  of  American  inde- 
pendence by  a  Britain  unembarrassed  in  Europe,  was 
an  absurdity  conceivable  only  to  such  enthusiastic  boys 
as  was  then  the  young  La  Fayette,  to  such  wholly  un- 
practical minds  as  that  of  Turgot,  or  to  popular  journalists 
of  the  type  which  then,  as  to-day,  are  uninstructed  whether 
in  historical  or  in  military  affairs. 

The  middle  issue  was  so  much  the  more  probable  as  to 
appear  a  calculable  thing:  the  troops  of  George  III.  would 
determine  the  campaign,  but  the  settlement  following  the 
expensive  success  of  the  British  army  would  be  a  com- 
promise whereby  the  colonies  should  be  free  to  administer 
their  own  affairs,  should  be  bound  in  some  loose  way 
to  Great  Britain,  and  should  stand  benevolently  neutral 
towards,  if  not  in  part  supporters  of,  her  position  in  Europe. 


144  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

The  formula  which  guides  a  commercial  State  such  as 
Britain  in  its  colonial  wars  has  long  been  familiar  to  its 
rivals;  it  is  as  simple  as  it  is  wise.  Though  we  give  it 
the  epithet  of  "generous"  and  speak  of  the  "granting 
of  self-government,"  while  enemies  will  call  it,  with  equal 
inaccuracy,  "a  capitulation"  followed  by  "an  alliance," 
the  nature  and  purpose  of  such  compromises  are  those  of  a 
fixed  policy  and  one  upon  whose  unalterable  data  the 
British  Empire  has  been  built  up. 

It  was  in  the  nature  of  things  that  the  British  Govern- 
ment in  this  summer  of  '77  should  first  seek  to  master  the 
Americans  in  the  field,  next  compromise  with  the  defeated 
colonials,  set  them  up  as  a  nation  nominally  dependent, 
really  allied,  and  so  find  itself  free  in  Europe  for  the  great 
duel  with  France.  At  Versailles  Vergennes  prepared  not 
attack  but  resistance,  and  pulled  with  an  accurate  propor- 
tion of  effort  all  the  strings  that  should  delay  Great  Britain, 
on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other,  unite  into  one  body  of 
resistance  against  her  the  Atlantic  seaboard  of  Europe  and 
the  principal  navies  of  the  continent  —  that  is,  the  Powers 
of  France  and  the  Peninsula ;  the  admiralties  of  Versailles, 
Lisbon  and  Madrid. 

As  the  Emperor  Joseph's  carriage  rolled  westward 
along  the  main  road  of  Brittany,  approaching  the  gates  of 
Brest,  Vergennes  was  signing  for  despatch  to  the  Spanish 
Court  that  note  of  his  which  inaugurated  the  active  part  of 
his  plan  of  defence  against  England.  Precisely  a  week 
later,  Burgoyne  and  his  forces  started  southward  from 
Canada  upon  what  should  have  been  the  decisive  march 
of  the  British  campaign  in  America. 

A  consideration  of  the  map  will  at  once  convince  the 
reader,  first  that  Great  Britain  was  in  a  position  suitable 


THE  THREE  YEARS  '  145 

to  immediate  victory,  and,  secondly,  that  the  military 
advisers  of  her  government  had  formed  the  best  possible 
plan  for  its  rapid  accomplishment. 

What  was  the  military  object  of  the  war?  The  control 
of  a  seaboard :  a  seaboard  stretching  indeed  through  fifteen 
degrees  of  latitude,  and  extending  in  its  contour  over  far 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  miles,  but  a  seaboard  only. 
Behind  it  lay  districts  which  for  military  purposes  did  not 
exist  -  -  untouched,  trackless,  resourceless.  The  life  of  the 
colonies,  especially  their  life  during  the  strain  of  a  war, 
flowed  through  the  ports. 

Again,  this  band  of  territory  ran  from  a  long  southern 
extremity,  whose  climate  was  unsuited  to  active  work  by 
Europeans,  through  a  middle  temperate  interval  to  another 
extremity  of  winter  fogs  and  rigorous  winter  cold.  A 
continental  climate  rendered  the  contrast  of  North  and 
South  less  noticeable,  for  the  warm  continental  summer 
embraced  it  all,  and  the  cold  continental  winter  penetrated 
far  south;  but  that  contrast  between  the  two  halves  of 
that  seaboard  was  sufficient  to  afford  a  line  of  social  and 
political  cleavage  already  apparent  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  destined  in  the  nineteenth  to  occasion  a  great 
domestic  war. 

Again,  there  lay  behind  this  seaboard,  at  a  distance  no- 
where greater  than  three  hundred  miles  nor  anywhere 
much  less  than  two,  that  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence  which 
Great  Britain  firmly  held ;  her  tenure  was  secure  in  the  diver- 
sity of  its  race,  religion  and  language  from  those  of  the 
rebels  and  in  the  unity  which  the  admirable  communications 
of  its  great  waterway  confirmed. 

Here  then  was  a  line  already  wholly  held,  the  St.  Law- 
rence, and  parallel  to  it  a  line  already  partially  held,  and 


* 

146  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

always  at  the  mercy  of  the  British  fleet  —  the  ports  of  the 
seacoast.  Up  and  down  the  belt  of  land  between  those 
parallel  lines  went  the  scattered  bands  of  the  rebels.  Even 
their  organised  armies  were  loosely  co-ordinated  in  action 
and  expanded  or  diminished  with  a  season. 

The  obvious  strategy  for  the  British  was  to  cut  that  inter- 
vening belt  in  a  permanent  fashion  by  establishing  a  line 
from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  sea,  and  so  to  separate  for 
good  the  forces  of  their  opponents  and  then  to  deal  with 
them  in  detail  and  at  leisure. 

An  accident  of  topography  afforded  to  this  simple  prob- 
lem an  obvious  key:  just  down  that  dividing  line,  which 
separates  the  nothern  climate  and  the  Puritan  type  of 
colony  from  the  rest,  a  sheaf  of  natural  wrays  leads  from 
the  coast  to  the  valley  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  of  these 
the  plainest  and  by  far  the  best  is  the  continuous  and 
direct  depression  afforded  by  the  long,  straight  valley  of 
the  Hudson  and  continued  in  one  easy  line  along  the 
depression  marked  by  Lakes  George  and  Champlain. 
There  is  not  upon  all  that  march  one  transverse  crest 
of  land  to  be  defended  nor  one  position  capable  of 
natural  defence,  and  in  its  whole  extent  water  carriage  is 
available  to  an  army  save  upon  the  very  narrow  watershed 
where  (according  to  the  amount  and  weight  of  supplies) 
two  —  or  at  most  three  —  days  must  be  devoted  to  a  land 
portage.  But  even  here,  between  the  foot  of  Lake  George 
and  the  Upper  Hudson,  existed  then  what  is  rare  even  to-day 
in  the  New  World,  a  road  passable  to  guns. 

Under  such  conditions,  even  had  the  rebellion  been 
universal  and  homogeneous,  the  strategy  imposed  was 
evident.  The  sea  was  England's;  the  English  forces  had 
but  to  land  in  force,  to  occupy  one  or  more  of  the  ports  at 


THE  THREE  YEARS  147 

the  outlet  of  these  ways  leading  to  the  valley  of  the  St. 
Lawrence,  and  simultaneously  to  march  down  from  that 
valley  to  the  sea.  They  would  thus  cut  the  rebellion  in 
half;  the  cut  so  made  could  easily  be  permanently  held, 
and  the  English  henceforth  could  operate  at  their  choice 
and  in  increasing  numbers  from  any  point  of  the  coast 
against  either  section  of  a  divided  enemy. 
•  I  say  this  was  the  obvious  plan  even  had  the  rebellion 
been  homogeneous  or  universal;  but  it  was  neither  — 
and  nowhere  was  it  weaker  or  more  divided  against  itself 
than  on  this  very  line  of  cleavage.  It  was  precisely  in  the 
valley  of  the  Hudson  and  at  its  mouth  that  the  British  could 
count  upon  the  greatest  hesitation  on  the  part  of  their 
opponents  and  of  most  support,  sometimes  ardent  support, 
on  the  part  of  their  friends.  New  York  was  thoroughly 
in  the  Royal  power  and  the  plan  of  marching  from  the  St. 
Lawrence  down  to  that  harbour  seemed  certain  to  conclude 
the  campaign.  Leaving  such  garrison  as  New  York 
required,  Howe  sailed  with  20,000  men  in  this  opening  of 
the  summer  of  1777  to  attack  some  one  of  the  harbours; 
after  a  cruise  of  some  hesitation  he  sailed  up  the  Delaware 
and  landed  to  march  on  the  source  of  supply,  Philadelphia. 
At  the  same  moment  Burgoyne  set  out  upon  his  march  from 
the  St.  Lawrence  valley  to  the  sea. 

Each  was  easily  successful.  Washington,  covering  Phila- 
delphia from  a  position  along  the  Brandywine,  was  com- 
pletely defeated.  Philadelphia  was  in  British  hands  before 
the  close  of  September ;  an  attempt  at  relief  was  crushed  in 
the  suburbs  within  a  week.  As  for  Burgoyne,  his  force, 
though  it  amounted  to  less  than  a  division,  was  equally 
at  ease.  He  swept  easily  down  Lake  Champlain:  the 
American  irregulars  abandoned  the  isthmus  and  their 


148  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

positions  near  Ticonderoga,  which  were  militarily  iden- 
tical with  that  pass.  He  pursued  the  enemy  to  the  extrem- 
ity of  the  water,  and  on  southward  up  the  valley,  towards 
the  watershed;  defeating  every  rally  and  confident  of 
immediate  success. 

It  was  but  early  in  July,  and  he  had  already  accomplished 
half  his  route,  and  could  boast  the  capture  of  over  a  hun- 
dred cannon  —  mainly  of  French  casting. 

All  had  gone  well.  The  news  reaching  London,  reached 
Paris  and  Madrid  by  the  mouths  of  English  Ministers  and 
Envoys,  whose  tone  was  now  of  an  increasing  firmness, 
and  who,  in  the  immediate  prospect  of  success,  began  to  ask 
in  plain  terms  how  matters  stood  between  France  and 
Spain,  and  whether  these  two  Bourbon  crowrns  were  pre- 
pared for  open  war. 

Vergennes  was  in  an  agony  of  writing,  of  secrecy  and  of 
defence,  urging  Spain  to  draw  secretly  close  to  France  that 
both  might  stand  ready  for  the  inevitable  blow  which 
England  would  deliver  when  the  colonies  were  once  sub- 
dued. 

What  followed  was  Burgoyne's  woodland  march  of  a 
few  miles  across  the  portage  from  the  lakes  to  the  Hudson. 

The  cause  of  that  march's  amazing  delay,  and  of  the 
disaster  consequent  upon  such  delay,  will  never  be 
fully  explained;  because,  although  not  a  few  acquainted 
with  European  roads  and  European  discipline  and  arms 
are  also  acquainted  (as  is  the  present  writer)  with  the 
unmade  country  traversed  by  that  force,  yet  there  was 
no  contemporary  who,  by  a  full  double  experience  of 
American  and  European  conditions,  could  present  in  his 
account  the  American  advantage  in  such  a  country  at 
that  time,  and  the  corresponding  difficulties  of  European 


THE  THREE  YEARS  149 

troops.  From  Fort  Anne,  where  the  last  American  force 
had  been  scattered,  to  Fort  Edward,  where  the  Hudson 
is  reached,  is  one  day's  easy  walking.  It  took  Burgoyne's 
army  twenty-one.  I  have  neither  space  nor  knowledge  to 
say  why :  German  slowness  (half  the  army  was  German) , 
the  painful  construction  of  causeways,  officers  (one  may 
suppose)  drinking  in  their  tents,  a  vast  train,  an  excess 
of  guns,  a  fancied  leisure — all  combined  to  protract  the 
delay.  The  month  of  July  was  at  an  end  when  the  British 
reached  the  river,  and,  having  reached  it,  the  men  were  on 
fatigue  day  after  day  bringing  in  the  guns  and  supplies 
that  had  come  by  water  to  the  extremity  of  Lake  George. 

In  this  way  August  was  wasted,  and  an  attempt  to  raid 
draught  cattle  a  few  miles  to  the  south-east  at  Benning- 
ton  in  Vermont  was,  in  spite  of  the  active  loyalty  or  treason 
of  many  colonists,  defeated  and  destroyed  —  a  disaster  due 
to  the  foreign  character,  the  small  number  employed,  and 
the  dilatory  marching  of  the  troops  so  detached.  It  was 
mid-September  before  the  army  crossed  the  Hudson  to  its 
western  bank,  where  a  small  auxiliary  force  approaching 
from  the  Mohawk  valley  was  to  have  joined  it.  That 
force  failed  to  effect  a  junction.  All  were  bewildered,  and 
now  a  heavy  rain  began  to  soften  the  green  ways  and  to 
swallow  the  wheels  of  the  guns.  Burgoyne  reached  no 
further  south  than  the  site  of  a  drawn  struggle  before  the 
mouth  of  the  Mohawk.  And  already  the  American  irregu- 
lars, on  hearing  of  the  British  difficulties,  had  gathered 
and  grown  in  number;  they  were  at  last  near  double  the 
invading  force,  and  September  was  ending.  The  woods 
were  full  of  colour  as  Burgoyne's  little  army  fell  back  - 
but  a  few  miles,  yet  back;  an  irresolution  was  upon  it, 
because  advance  was  no  longer  possible,  and  yet  a  full 


150  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

retreat  would  mean  the  failure  of  all  the  large  plan  of 
England.  There  was  a  rally,  a  success,  a  failure,  and  the 
loss  of  guns.  With  October  they  were  beneath  the  heights 
of  Saratoga.  Certain  supplies  attempted  to  reach  them 
by  crossing  the  river ;  the  far  bank  was  found  to  be  held  by 
the  increasing  forces  of  rebellion. 

It  was  determined  to  abandon  the  effort  and  to  retire  - 
at  last,  but  too  late.  The  road  to  the  lakes  was  blocked; 
more  guns  were  lost;  the  enemy  were  gathering  and  still 
gathering,  a  random  farmer  militia  whom  such  an  entan- 
glement tempted:  they  were  soon  four  to  one.  An  attempt 
at  relief  by  the  little  force  down  river  from  New  York 
had  failed.  On  the  12th  of  October,  a  Sabbath,  the 
harassed  army  reposed.  On  the  13th  a  Monday,  Burgoyne 
ordered  an  exact  return  of  forces,  forage,  and  supply;  some 
five  thousand  were  to  be  found,  but  not  four  thousand  men 
could  stand  to  roll-call  armed;  not  two  thousand  of  these 
were  British;  perhaps  a  week's  supply  remained;  of  all 
his  park  thirty-five  pieces  alone  were  left  to  him.  He 
called  a  council,  to  which  every  officer  above  the  rank  of 
lieutenant  was  summoned,  and  that  afternoon  the  pro- 
posals to  treat  were  drawn -up  and  despatched;  by  ten, 
Gates,  in  command  of  the  American  force,  had  sent  in 
his  reply.  Tuesday  and  Wednesday  were  taken  up  in 
the  terms  of  an  honourable  surrender  —  not  exactly  ob- 
served. On  Thursday,  the  16th,  these  terms  were  signed, 
and  on  that  day,  that  repeated  day  the  16th  of  October, 
the  keystone  of  the  British  plan  in  North  America  had 
crumbled,  and  the  strong  arch  of  a  wise  strategy  was  ruined. 

It  was  but  a  small  force  that  surrendered  in  those  lonely 
hills  to  a  herd  of  irregulars.  The  causes  of  the  failure 
were  many,  tedious,  gradual,  and  therefore  obscure;  but  the 


THE  THREE  YEARS  151 

effect  was  solemn  and  of  swelling  volume.  It  roused  the 
colonies ;  it  slowly  echoed  across  the  Atlantic ;  it  changed  the 
face  of  Europe. 

The  French  Court,  at  the  moment  of  that  surrender  in 
the  woods  three  thousand  miles  away,  sat  at  Fontainebleau, 
decided  for  pleasure. 

Goltz,  watching  all  things  there  for  the  King  of  Prussia, 

his  master,  wrote  (on  that  very  day)  that  the  French  had 

let  their  moment  slip :  England  was  now  secure,  he  thought 

-for  one  of  the  great  weaknesses  of  Prussia  is  that,  like 

self-made  men,  jshe  has  no  instinct  for  fate.  - 

Florida  Blanco  (upon  the  very  day  that  Burgoyne's 
troops  piled  arms)  was  writing  from  Madrid  to  Vergennes 
that  "the  two  courts"  (of  France  and  Spain)  "should  do 
all  to  avoid  cause  of  complaint  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain 
at  such  a  time." 

Vergennes  himself,  gloomily  alone  amid  the  foolish 
noise  of  Fontainebleau,  in  the  sweat  of  late  hours  and  gam- 
ing, thus  abandoned  by  Spain  and  seeing  his  hopes  of  the 
Spanish  alliance  going  down,  wrote  (on  that  same  16th  of 
October,  the  day  that  Burgoyne's  troops  piled  arms!): 
"The  Ministers  of  England  think  her  the  mistress  of 
the  world.  .  .  .  My  patience  has  been  hard  tried 
.  .  .  true,  the  two  (Bourbon)  crowns  must  go  warily. 
.  .  .  I  hope  the  constraint  may  end,  but  I  have  no  wish 
for  war.  ...  I  only  ask  that  England  shall  not  com- 
pel us  to  do  what  she  dares  not  do  herself,  that  is,  to 
treat  these  Americans  as  pirates  and  outlaws." 

In  such  a  mood  of  despondence  and  of  anxiety  the  French 
Foreign  Office  awaited  the  first  blow  England  might  choose 
to  deliver;  in  such  a  mood  of  reluctance  and  fear  Spain 
refused  to  declare  herself  on  the  side  of  the  French  should 


152  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

England  choose  to  strike;  and  in  such  a  tension  Western 
Europe  stood  for  one  week,  another,  and  a  third,  when, 
early  in  November,  came  the  first  rumours  of  the  truth. 
How  they  came  it  is  impossible  to  determine.  They  came 
before  known  or  common  methods  could  have  brought  them ; 
they  came  before  true  news,  like  a  shadow  or  a  presage. 
On  the  7th  of  November  Vergennes  had  written  to 
Noailles  of  a  hint  of  some  English  defeat,  "not  too  much 
to  be  trusted."  On  the  15th  he  was  wondering  at  the 
insistence  of  the  English  ministers  upon  their  Pennsylvanian 
successes,  at  the  English  silence  upon  the  Hudson  march. 
As  the  month  wore  on,  as  the  English  insistence  grew 
gentler,  the  English  silence  more  profound,  Vergennes 
determined  his  final  policy;  but  even  as  he  was  drawing  up 
his  memorandum  in  favour  of  recognition  to  be  granted 
to,  and  of  alliance  to  be  concluded  with,  the  United 
States,  on  the  4th  of  December,  and  before  this  document 
was  signed,  full  news  came  and  all  was  known.  The 
4th  of  December  is  a  day  propitious  for  arms;  it  is  the 
gunners'  festival. 

The  issue  was  not  long  in  doubt.  Upon  the  5th,  the 
story  and  consequence  of  Saratoga  were  drawn  up  and 
despatched  on  every  side.  Upon  the  6th,  the  fateful 
document  calling  the  American  delegates  to  an  audience 
with  Louis  was  submitted  to  that  King,  and  he  wrote  in 
his  little  sloping  hand  at  the  foot  of  it  that  word  "approuve," 
which  you  may  still  read. 

Upon  the  8th,  Franklin  at  Passy  drafted,  Deane,  Lee, 
and  he  also  signed,  their  memorable  acceptance.  The 
days  that  followed,  to  the  end  of  '77  and  beyond  it,  were 
occupied  in  nothing  more  than  the  confirmation  of  this 
revolution  in  policy,  and  it  was  certain  that  by  the 


THE  THREE  YEARS  153 

New  Year  the  French  Crown  would  support  the  Rebellion 
in  arms. 


Such  were  the  three  years  in  which  the  seeds  of  the  Queen's 
tragedy  were  sown :  they  were  sown  deep.  The  stock  of  her 
disaster  was  established  in  a  vigorous  soil;  but  during  the 
silent  period  of  its  growth,  before  the  plant  had  come  to 
its  evil  maturity,  a  few  deceitful  years  were  still  to  hide 
from  her  the  sequence  of  her  fate.  For  the  two  glories  of 
life  were  upon  her,  victory  and  the  birth  of  children. 

In  common  with  all  her  Court  the  Queen  could  now,  in 
the  hale  winter  of  '77-'78,  imagine  herself  upon  the  thresh- 
old of  a  new  and  fruitful  life.  Her  chief  anxiety  was  now 
dispelled,  for  she  might  await  securely  the  advent  of  an 
heir.  Her  vivacity  and  her  distractions  seemed  now  as 
harmless  as  her  habit  of  changing  pleasures  was  now  fixed; 
her  casual  but  active  excursions  into  public  affairs  had 
now  in  her  husband's  eyes  an  excuse  or  motive  they  for- 
merly had  lacked,  and  her  political  interference,  though 
utterly  without  plan,  was  even  destined  to  achieve  for  a 
moment  a  peculiar,  if  deceptive,  success. 

This  period  of  her  life  ends  with  a  scene  which  the  reader 
may  well  retain,  for  it  sums  up  the  change;  a  scene  which 
forms  the  happy  conclusion  of  so  much  unrest  and  the 
introduction  to  a  brief,  a  most  uncertain,  but  —  while  it 
lasted  —  an  enlarged  and  a  conquering  time. 

The  new  year  had  come.  The  winter  festivities  of 
early  '78  were  at  their  height  awaiting  their  end  at  the 
approaching  carnival.  It  was  the  21st  of  January  —  a  date 
thrice  of  great  moment  to  the  French  people  —  and  the 
Queen  was  holding  a  ball  (characteristically  hers)  in  the 


154  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

palace.  There  was  a  fuller  life  that  evening,  in  the  glare 
of  a  thousand  candles,  than  had  yet  been  known;  a  more 
continuous  and  a  more  vivacious  noise  of  laughter  and  of 
music.  Paris  had  come  more  largely  than  usual;  there  were 
many  strangers,  and  the  air  seemed  full  of  an  exultant  con- 
ciliation. Upon  this  joy  and  movement  there  fell  a  sud- 
den silence;  it  was  a  silence  the  Queen  well  comprehended 
and  had  expected  too,  for  Provence,  coming  straight  from 
the  Council,  had  entered  the  room  and  had  given  her  the 
message  she  awaited.  The  message  was  repeated,  whis- 
pered first,  then  louder  and  more  eager  questions  and 
replies  were  everywhere  heard;  voices  rose  louder:  young 
Artois  openly  cheered. 

The  English  ambassador  had  turned  at  the  unusual 
scene  and  knew  its  meaning;  he  despatched  to  his  Govern- 
ment that  night  the  news  that  the  Independence  of  the 
United  States  had  been  recognised  and  orders  to  the  French 
navy  signed. 

What  followed  may  be  briefly  told.  In  somewhat  over 
a  fortnight  the  treaty  of  recognition  and  of  alliance  with 
the  new  Republic  was  concluded.  The  approaching  affair 
with  England  began  to  equal,  very  soon  it  wholly  sur- 
passed, in  interest  and  peril  the  petty  Bavarian  quarrel, 
and  though  war  was  not  formally  declared,  French  ships 
were  in  February  already  attacked  by  English.  In  mid- 
March  the  treaty  was  notified  by  the  French  Ambassador 
in  London  to  the  Prime  Minister  of  England;  forty-eight 
hours  later  Lord  Stormont  at  Versailles,  had  demanded 
and  received  his  papers.  A  month  of  preparation  passed. 

At  last,  upon  Easter  Sunday  (the  19th  of  April  in  that  year) 
two  couriers  riding  crossed  each  other  at  the  royal  gate  of 


THE  THREE  YEARS  157 

Versailles  —  the  one  reaching,. the  other  leaving,  the  palau'an 
He  that  drew  rein  and  was  ending  his  journey  bore  great" 
news :  D'Estaing  had  sailed  from  Toulon  with  twenty  ships 
of  the  line,  and  the  campaign  was  opened.     He  that  set 
spurs  and  was  but  just  beginning  his  post  bore  great  news 
also,  for  he  had  upon  him  that  letter  (it  is  still  preserved) 
in  which  Marie  Antoinette  told  her  mother  that  now  she 
was  certainly  with  child. 


154 


VII 

THE  CHILDREN 

EASTER  SUNDAY,  APRIL  19,  1778,  TO  MONDAY,  OCTOBER  22,  1781 

THE  expectation  of  an  heir,  the  Queen's  ascendancy 
over  her  husband,   the   promise   of   adventurous 
war,   proceeded   with   the  year.     Meanwhile   the 
little  business  of  Bavaria   somewhat  marred  the  hopes  of 
the    now    renewed    and    invigorated    monarchy.     It   is    a 
business  history  should  make  little  of;  hardly  a  combat  — 
I  rather   a   diplomatic   rupture   soon   arranged.     It   covered 
the  year  exactly  —  it  was  settled  with  the  close  of  it ;  but  it 
had  its  significance  in  the  Queen's  life,  for   her  political 
action  in  it  confirmed  and   extended  the  popular  idea  that 
Marie  Antoinette  was  treasonable  to  French  interests  in  the 
department  of  foreign  affairs. 

The  most  apparent  thing  of  that  moment  was  the  new  cer- 
titude and  strength  of  the  Queen  now  that  she  was  to  be  a 
mother.  Her  love  of  change  became  less  frivolous,  more 
mixed  with  character;  her  old  passionate  friendships,  her 
appetite  for  colour  of  every  kind  —  in  jewels,  in  fantasies, 
in  voices  —  took  on  some  depth  and  permanence.  Even 
her  interference  with  public  affairs  was  no  longer  the  mere 
whim  that  had  been  the  bane  of  Turgot:  it  had  objects; 
those  objects  were  pursued,  though  they  were  personal  and 
unwise.  Unfortunately  her  mother  and  Mercy  persuaded 
her,  just  as  her  strength  appeared,  not  to  the  aggrandise- 
ment of  her  husband's  throne,  but  to  the  mere  fending 

156 


THE  CHILDREN  157 

off  Prussia  from  Maria  Theresa's  land  in  the  Bavarian 
quarrel.  There  arose  concerning  her  action  a  swarm  of 
whispers,  voices  not  yet  of  moment,  though  numerous  in  the 
taverns  and  clear  at  Court. 

The  Elector  of  Bavaria  had  died  while  Versailles  and 
all  the  Court  were  in  the  height  of  their  absorption  in  the 
American  Rebellion;  just  in  that  last  December  which  was 
full  of  the  first  active  approach  of  Vergennes  towards  the 
American  envoys.  The  passing  of  the  Electorate  to  another 
branch  of  the  family,  and  that  branch  childless,  or  rather 
lacking  direct  legitimate  issue,  threw  the  musty  anarchy 
of  German  archives  open  to  the  lawyers;  they  were  rum- 
maged and  a  dust  arose.  The  various  fragments  out  of 
which  the  old  Duchy  and  the  newer  Electorate  Were  pieced 
together  found  claimants  everywhere,  and  the  two  heads  of 
antagonism  were  necessarily  Vienna  and  Berlin:  Berlin, 
which  would  support  the  heir  to  the  old  Duchy  —  at  a 
price;  Vienna,  which  would  protect  the  reigning  Elector 
for  the  reversion  —  on  doubtful  pleas  of  inheritance  — 
to  some  half  of  the  mosaic  over  which  he  ruled. 

There  was  here  no  plain  conscience  of  civilised  right 
against  a  northern  and  blundering  atheism  such  as  had 
earlier  supported  the  defence  of  Maria  Theresa  against  the 
too  successful  cynicism  of  Frederick  the  Great.  The 
ambitions  of  Joseph  were  the  ambitions  of  a  philosopher; 
they  were  at  least  as  empty  and  by  no  means  as  thorough 
as  the  soldierly  ambitions  of  his  opponent,  the  King  of 
Prussia:  the  injury  was  mutual,  the  contempt  of  justice 
equal,  for  Joseph  was  a  pupil  of  Frederick's  in  wrong-doing. 
To  each,  however,  the  complex  little  territorial  quarrel 
seemed  of  secular  magnitude.  Maria  Theresa  was  mad- 
dened with  anxiety  and  wrote,  so  maddened,  despairing 


158  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

appeals  to  her  daughter  at  Versailles.  Mercy  moved  all 
his  persuasion  to  persuade  the  intervention  of  France. 
Vergennes  as  resolutely  refused  to  be  involved,  England 
was  approaching  Austria,  to  the  detriment,  it  was  hoped, 
of  the  Bourbons,  the  whole  weight  of  diplomatic  thought 
was  at  work,  and  Europe  was  warned  and  threatened  with 
incredible  futures  as  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  enemies 
armed  for  the  acquisition  of  a  titular  sovereignty  over  the 
tortuous  and  overlapping  boundaries  of  a  feudal  ruin. 
Such  were  the  petty  concerns  of  statesmen  and  even  of 
demagogues  in  a  year  when  the  young  men  who  were  to 
fight  at  Valmy  were  already  boys.  The  politicians 
wrangled  over  the  Bavarian  succession  as  we  to-day  wrangle 
over  colonial  things,  imagining  them  to  contain  the  future 
fate  of  Europe. 

The  Queen  at  first  did  little.  Mercy  complained  of  her 
detachment.  She  was  occupied  in  the  greater  matter  of 
her  maternity,  passing  all  the  time  of  the  first  leaves  and 
the  early  summer  rains  in  quietude  at  Marly;  she  would 
have  no  Court  about  her,  and  when  she  wrote  to  Maria 
Theresa  it  was  perpetually  of  the  child.  That  seclusion  and 
that  hope  so  much  attached  to  her  the  new  affection 
and  the  new  pride  of  Louis  that  when  at  last  she  spoke 
to  him,  and  spoke  with  increasing  violence,  for  her  family 
and  for  Vienna,  she  largely  accomplished  her  aim.  She 
did  not  intend  to  involve  the  Foreign  Office  -  -  Vergennes 
was  apparently  immovable  —  but  so  great  was  now  her 
influence  with  Louis  that  by  autumn  she  did  obtain  a 
tardy  intervention,  and  until  she  obtained  it  she  showed 
in  every  way  her  determination  to  be  heard.  The  first  acts 
of  war  in  July  moved  her  to  countermand  a  feast  at  Trianon ; 
during  August  she  frequently  disturbed  the  Council  by  her 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

From  the  principal  bust  at  Versailles 


THE  CHILDREN  159 

presence.  In  September  she  put  forward  an  uncertain 
proposal  for  mediation.  It  was  refused,  and  her  anger 
added  to  the  difficulties  of  the  French  Crown.  But  she 
did  obtain  —  the  forgotten  act  was  to  re-arise,  enormous, 
at  her  scaffold  —  she  did  obtain  a  subsidy.  Treaty 
demanded  it:  it  had  been  refused:  the  whole  duty  of  the 
Bourbon  Crown  was  to  watch  finance — yet  fifteen  mil- 
lion went  to  Austria.  The  taverns  made  it  a  whole  con- 
voy of  gold;  there  were  songs  against  the  Queen,  accus- 
ing her  of  "paying  out  French  gold."  Older  and  worse 
stories  about  her  were  revived.  The  printed  obsceni- 
ties from  London  and  Amsterdam  began  to  flow. 
The  set  at  Court  which  had  called  her  openly  "the  Aus- 
trian" before  her  accession,  and  since  her  accession  had  in 
secret  still  so  called  her,  passed  on  the  term  to  the  street, 
and  the  nickname  was  common  in  Paris  before  the  end 
of  the  year. 

All  these  things  she  had  forgotten  before  the  winter 
closed  upon  her,  and  her  hour  approached.  They  were 
indeed  little  things;  seedlings.  Much  greater  was  the 
coming  of  an  heir  and  Fersen's  return. 


He  had  come  back  late  in  August.  The  moment  she 
had  seen  him,  with  his  tall,  upstanding  gait  and  serious 
eyes,  she  came  forward  and  reminded  him  (and  those 
about  her)  of  his  old  acquaintance  —  he  was  a  friend. 
The  lad  was  still  quite  young;  here  was  she  now  a  woman, 
and  the  effect  of  four  years,  changing  her  so  greatly  in  body 
had  less  changed  him  in  body ;  it  had  less  changed  her  in 
heart.  For  as  the  days  fell  shorter  and  autumn  lapsed  into 
winter,  his  rare  and  brief  notes  betray  the  growing  charm  of 


160  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  woman  who  perpetually  remembered  him.  All  through 
the  months  of  the  cold,  through  the  time  of  her  approaching 
childbirth,  and  through  the  gaieties  of  the  new  year  that 
succeeded,  he  remained.  Many  noted  her  visage  and  her 
tone,  once  especially  when  she  sang  and  looked  at  him 
during  her  singing.  At  last  he  also — when  in  April  he 
left  the  Court,  bitten  with  the  gallant  adventure  of  Amer- 
ica, like  so  many  of  his  rank  —  he  also  had  understood. 
She  followed  him  perpetually  with  her  eyes;  she  followed 
him  as  he  left  her  rooms  again  for  the  last  time,  and  it  was 
noted  that  there  were  tears  in  her  eyes.  A  wealthy 
woman  rallied  Fersen  as  he  left  upon  his  conquest;  he 
was  now  old  enough  to  deny  gravely  that  any  woman  of 
that  Court  had  deigned  to  consider  him:  having  so  denied 
it  he  was  gone. 

As  for  the  Queen,  she  wrote  or  spoke  of  him  in 
public  as  a  young  nobleman  only,  now  known  and 
worthy  of  advancement,  and  since  she  kept  the  rest  strictly 
in  her  heart  no  emphasis  here  of  that  which  lay  at  the 
root  of  her  life  would  give  it  dignity  or  value  in  these  pages. 
Yet  throughout  these  pages  the  name  of  Fersen  should 
be  the  chief  name. 

He  was  gone  for  five  more  years  after  so  brief  a  sight 
of  new  things. 


Meanwhile  the  Court  awaited  the  birth  of  an  heir. 

There  was  a  murmur  all  around.  Monsieur  had  writ- 
ten frankly  enough  to  the  King  of  Sweden  that  his  hope 
of  the  succession  was  gone.  The  Court  was  transformed, 
and  Marie  Antoinette  especially  was  a  new  power:  the 
light  calumnies  were  grown  heavy  now;  the  r£yenge_£or 


THE  CHILDREN  161 

personal  touches  was  becoming  a  State  affair;  a  weight  of 
office  was  upon  her,  for  she  was  now  to  be  half  the  Crown 
and  the  true  wife  of  a  King  who  governed,  and  the  mother 
of  a  King  after  him. 

It  was  on  the  19th  of  December,  in  the  very  early 
hours  long  before  dawn,  that  her  husband  was  warned: 
in  the  forenoon  her  travail  began. 

I  liave  said  that  the  French  Monarchy  was  a  sacramen- 
tal and  therefore  a  public  thing.  The  last  act  of  its 
public  ritual  was  about  to  be  accomplished;  for  the  last 
time  it  rose  to  the  mystical  duties  of  its  office  and  dared  to 
mix  with  the  nation,  not  as  a  person,  but  as  an  Institution 
for  whom,  being  immortal,  peril  was  nothing,  and,  being  im- 
personal, decency  and  comfort  nothing.  Could  it  have  so 
dared  again  it  would  have  been  saved,  but  it  did  not  dare. 

The  populace  demanded  admittance  to  the  birth,  and 
were  admitted  in  the  ancient  way.  The  square  room  in 
which  the  Queen  lay,  upon  a  low  little  camp-bed  before  the 
fire,  was  crowded  in  a  moment;  upon  the  carved  marble  of 
the  chimney-piece  two  street  arabs  were  seen  climbing. 
The  market-women  were  there,  mixed  with  the  ladies  of  the 
Court,  and  a  great  press  of  the  poor  from  the  streets  had 
found  an  entry  and  were  packed  also  upon  the  great  stairs 
outside.  Everything  was  a-buzz  and  a-tiptoe,  questioning, 
craning  for  the  news;  the  market-women  commiserated 
and  complained;  the  ladies-in-waiting  stood  silent,  each 
estimating  the  event  —  the  change  there  would  be  at 
Court,  the  strong  place  the  King  would  now  hold,  and  above 
all,  the  new  power  of  the  mother  —  the  little  heir,  the  boy 
who  should  dispossess  Monsieur,  exile  Artois  perhaps,  and 
recapture  the  heart  of  the  crowds  to  the  Bourbon  name. 

For  some  critical  moments  there  was  a  silence. 


162  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Vermond  (the  tutor's  brother),  who  was  her  doctor,  or 
her  midwife,  had  ordered  every  crevice  to  be  closed.  Even 
the  chinks  of  the  window  had  paper  gummed  to  them. 
In  such  an  air  and  under  such  an  ordeal  the  Queen  fainted. 
Louis  in  a  passion  of  sense  thrust  his  arm  through  a 
pane  of  glass  and  let  in  the  winter  cold;  Vermond  lanced 
a  vein,  and  with  the  bleeding  and  the  fresh  draught  of  air 
the  Queen  returned  to  life.  They  told  her  that  the  child 
was  a  girl. 


There  were  great  crowds  at  her  churching  and  some 
eagerness.  The  Latin  Quarter  was  impassable  with  folk 
as  her  coach  crawled  up  the  hill  towards  the  shrine  of  Ste. 
Genevieve.  The  square  in  front  of  the  Cathedral  was 
very  full  —  but  they  lacked  a  Dauphin.  The  King  was 
glad  enough.  When,  upon  Christmas  Eve,  the  child  had 
grasped  his  finger,  he  had  told  his  pleasure  to  all.  Her 
name  and  godparents,  her  household  and  her  future  were 
discussed  as  solemn  things.  But  in  Versailles  the  air  was 
dull  with  anti-climax;  they  had  depended  upon,  or  braced 
themselves  for,  or  begun  their  intrigue  against,  a  son  of 
France  —  and  none  was  there. 

The  little  girl  who  thus  was  born  alone  survived.  Her 
brothers  perished — the  heir  in  prison;  her  father  and 
her  mother  both  were  publicly  destroyed.  She  lived. 
The  country  house  of  her  old  age  I  wTell  remember,  a  sol- 
emn and  lonely  place,  small  and  grey  and  deep  in  the 
woods --long  empty.  It  fell  into  ruins,  was  sold  for 
stone,  and  a  road  driven  over  it ;  but  after  nightfall  horses 
refused  to  pass  the  place,  and  legends  of  darkness  clung  to 
the  last  blood  of  the  Bourbons. 


THE  CHILDREN  163 

It  was  but  the  close  of  January  when  the  Queen  returned 
from  La  Muette  and  her  churching  to  Versailles  and  the 
disappointment  of  Versailles.  It  was  just  a  year  from  the 
ball-room  scene  that  had  meant  war  with  the  English. 
That  year  had  done  nothing  but  maintain  the  struggle  to 
the  surprise  and  encouragement  of  the  French  Ministry; 
it  had  done  no  more,  but  even  that  was  much.  The  naval 
actions  had  been  at  the  worst  indecisive,  the  English  com- 
munications along  the  rebel  coast  were  now  in  perpetual 
jeopardy,  and  would  so  remain  until  a  French  fleet  was 
destroyed:  none  was  destroyed.  Even  an  attempt  to 
blockade  the  French  in  Boston  harbour  had  failed,  and  in 
November  D'Estaing  had  slipped  away  from  Byron  under 
the  advantage  of  a  storm.  Of  all  the  operations  of  that 
year  perhaps  the  most  momentous  to  history  was  the 
chance  and  inconclusive  fight  of  July  in  the  Atlantic,  for 
it  gave  the  Queen  occasion  to  doubt  the  courage  of  Chartres 
and  to  ridicule  it:  and  Chartres,  soon  to  be  Orleans,  found 
his  growing  hatred  of  her  fixed  forever. 

As  for  her,  she  kept  her  carnival,  the  carnival  of  1779. 
Her  less  light  purpose  now  earned  her  reproaches  far  more 
deep  than  those  which  had  pursued  her  first  childless  years ; 
but  in  her  new  hopes  she  could  forget  them,  and  her  much 
rarer  omissions  did  not  remain  in  her  mind.  She  did  not 
see  how  solidly  the  foundations  of  her  fate  were  being  laid 
in  the  dark,  and  how  every  trivial  folly  was  her  foe ;  no  act 
of  hers  proved  great  enough  to  destroy  the  last  effect  of 
these  trivial  follies. 

She  went  to  the  Opera-ball  on  Shrove  Tuesday  with  the 
King  —  it  was  a  folly  (they  said)  to  leave  Versailles  so 
soon.v "  She  went  without  him  a  week  later  —  it  was  a  folly 
tcTgcf  alone.  That  night,  her  coach  breaking  down,  she 


164  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

must  take  a  public  fly  —  a  piece  of  common  sense.  She 
spoke  of  the  adventure,  and  it  pleased  her  hugely,  but  the 
populace  twisted  it  into  I  know  not  what  adventures, 
repeated  and  enlarged  in  a  thousand  ways. 

When  in  April  the  measles  incommoded  her,  she  must 
retire  to  Trianon  for  a  month — it  was  common  sense; 
but  it  was  "breaking  roof"  with  the  King  and  therefore 
a  lesion  in  the  constant  etiquette  of  the  Crown.  She  took 
with  her  her  young  sister-in-law,  Madame  Elizabeth, 
whom  she  had  once  petulantly  avoided,  and  now,  saner, 
loved;  and  Madame  de  Lamballe  was  there  too.  It  was 
common  sense;  but  her  absence  from  the  Court  was  hate- 
ful, was  an  insult  to  the  courtiers,  and  the  presence  at  the 
Trianon  during  the  day  of  four  gentlemen,  her  friends, 
was  more  hateful  still.  The  lies  poured  out  in  a  printed 
stream  from  London;  and  the  Paris  coffee-shops,  and  the 
drawing-rooms  too,  had  now  woven  round  her  an  enduring 
legend  of  debauchery  more  real  than  things  witnessed  or 
heard.  The  calumny  was  fixed. 

If  a  moment  must  be  chosen  of  which  one  can  say  that 
it  was  the  decisive  moment  in  her  public  ill-repute,  the 
moment  before  which  that  repute  was  yet  fluid,  the  mo- 
ment after  which  it  was  set,  then  that  moment  must  be 
found  in  this  summer  of  her  twenty-fourth  year,  1779. 
It  was  an  effect  coming  well  after  its  cause :  the  high  tide  of 
a  wave  that  the  first  reckless  three  years  had  raised. 

It  may  be  asked  -whether,  had  some  shock  or  some  neces- 
sity wholly  changed  her,  had  she  given  up  every  lightness 
as  she  had  already  given  up  most  excesses,  she  might  not 
yet  have  warded  off  the  approaches  of  a  distant  judg- 
ment. No,  she  could  not.  The  character  of  the  attack 
upon  her  she  could  have  modified ;  but  she  could  only  have 


THE  CHILDREN  '  165 

diminished  its  volume  by  increasing  its  intensity,  or  its 
rapidity  by  extending  its  already  almost  universal  vogue: 
she  could  not  have  escaped  it.  The  most  sober  actions 
of  that  enthusiastic  nature  would  now  for  ever  be  criticised./ 
Had  no  money  gone  on  slight  pleasures,  the  money  spent 
in  every  error  of  foreign  policy  would  have  been  put  downV 
to  her;  every  unpopular  dismissal  she  was  to  be  guilty  of,  j 
innocent  or  no,  and  her  name  was  to  be,  in  every  story  of 
intrigue,  however  incredible,  pre-judged.  She  was  destined, 
henceforward,  to  be  forgotten  in  victory  and  remembered 
in  defeat,  nor  could  anything  have  saved  her  save  a  sudden 
comprehension  of  France.  No  God  revealed  it  to  her,  and 
to  the  general  protest  that  was  rising  beneath  her  came 
accident  after  accident,  some  hardly  of  her  doing,  some 
not  at  all,  but  every  one  pointing  towards  the  single  issue 
of  her  fate,  not  one  in  aid  of  her. 

The  nights  of  August  were  hot  and  the  early  autumn 
also.  The  customary  tours  of  the  Court  had  been  coun- 
termanded to  save  money.  The  princesses  walked  at 
evening  and  mingled  with  the  crowd  on  the  terrace  of  the 
palace,  where  was  the  band.  It  gave  scandal.  It  gave 
scandal  that  she  should  walk  later  with  Artois.  It  gave 
most  scandal  that  Madame  de  Polignac,  with  her  refined 
and  silent  face,  her  gentle  deep-blue  eyes  under  that  dark 
hair  - —  a  type  not  national  —  should  so  entirely  possess 
the  Queen. 

The  Polignac  clique  demanded  and  obtained  on  every 
side.  It  was  a  double  evil:  a  proof  to  the  Court  that  the 
aristocracy  as  a  whole  were  excluded  from  favour  and 
that  a  faction  ruled;  a  proof  to  the  nation  that,  at 
a  time  when  finance  was  the  known  burden,  and  when^ 
in  the  midst  of  prosperity,  a  permanent  crisis  weighed 


s 


166  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

on  the  impatient  poor  and  the  public  forces  alike,  the 
executive,  the  King,  could  blindly  spend  money  and 
endow  every  Polignac  claim.  The  sums  involved  in 
this  patronage  of  the  Polignacs,  as  in  every  other  public 
extravagance  of  the  French,  were  small.  The  debts  of  a 
Pitt  or  a  Fox  were  far  larger,  the  luxury  of  our  modern 
money-dealers  are  mountainous  compared  to  them;  but 
they  fell  on  a  nation  wholly  egalitarian,  unused  to  and 
intolerant  of  government  by  the  wealthy,  and  a  nation 
which  regarded  (and  regards)  its  government  as  the  prin- 
cipal engine  to  use  against  the  rich,  not  in  their  aid. 

Trianon,  not  enormous  in  its  cost,  grew  to  be  yet  another 
legend,  and  that  legend  was  not  diminished  when,  in  the 
summer  of  1780,  a  little  theatre  was  opened  there,  a  little 
stage  for  the  Queen. 

All  the  world  did  such  things !  None  could  blame  her  — 
yet  all  did.  After  all,  one  great  house  after  another  had 
put  up  its  show  —  most  of  them  more  costly  than  hers  : 
but  there  was  in  her  gradual  extension  of  the  amusement 
something  that  aggrandised  it  and  made  it  a  public  talk; 
her  invitation  to  the  great  Paris  companies  of  actors,  her 
very  seclusion  at  first,  with  its  opportunity  for  rumour, 
later  her  open  doors,  swelled  the  comment  and  the  offence 
of  Paris.  Paris  detested  the  private  theatre  from  the 
first.  There  was  in  it  a  mixture  of  carelessness  for  the 
/State  and  of  personal  abasement  which  it  could  not  tolerate 
fin  a  French  Queen;  yet  how  simple  was  the  distraction  to 
her,  and  how  could  the  subtleties  of  these  Paris  critics, 
themselves  the  best  actors  in  the  world,  deriding  acting 
and  despising  it,  be  comprehensible  to  her  ?  She  played  on. 

The  King  came  often.  He  applauded.  She  permitted 
—  in  this  year  1780  at  least  —  no  one  but  the  royal  family 


THE  CHILDREN  167 

to  witness  her  from  the  audience  .  .  .  but  the  parts  were 
many  and  needed  many  players.  She  made  dull  Campan, 
her  librarian,  manage  for  her;  she  gave  no  place  in  the  dis- 
traction to  those  who  thought  their  presence  about  her  to 
be  a  most  solemn  right  and  duty.  In  the  autumn  to  the 
acting  she  must  add  singing,  though  her  voice  was  not 
always  in  tune  and  was  often  displeasing  in  its  lack  of 
volume.  Stage  parts  demanded  stage  lovers,  and  hear- 
ing this,  Mercy  in  his  turn  opposed.  He  came  at  her 
invitation  (but  he  insisted  on  being  hidden  behind  the 
lattice  of  a  box),  he  applauded  her  acting  somewhat,  was 
courtier-like  to  her  singing  —  but  he  disapproved. 

Silent,  a  little  bent,  low-voiced,  a  man  of  but  fifty-three 
-  though  seemingly  older  —  Mercy  was  now  at  tl^e  hpj.ofoL 
of  that  long  career  during  wtich  for  twenty-two  years  he 
was  Austria  itself  permanently  present  before  Marie 
Antoinnette,  a  spy  over  her  for  her  mother's  sake  and 
for  her  own,  a  devoted  servant  of  the  Hapsburgs  and 
Lorraine. 

His  nobility  was  of  the  Empire:  a  Belgian  from  Liege, 
a  man  without  nationality,  and  with  no  comprehension 
of  the  rising  religion  of  patriotism,  he  had  from  his  child- 
hood formed  part  of  that  cosmopolitan  soldiery  which  was 
the  shield  of  Maria  Theresa;  he  lived  for  that  Great  Lady 
who  maintained  him  in  his  embassy,  and  in  his  manner  and 
tradition  he  maintained  the  character  it  had  had  under 
his  master,  Kaunitz. 

He  had  passed  all  his  early  manhood  in  that  splendid 
riverside  house  in  Paris  which  the  dandyism  of  the  great 
diplomatist  his  teacher  had  demanded.  His  youth  — 
reserved,  awkward  and  probably  laborious  —  had  left  him 
very  observant.  He  had  adopted  for  life  all  the  externals 


168  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  the  Parisians,  but  —  with  the  narrowness  of  his  profes- 
sion —  he  had  failed  to  see  that  inmost  part  of  them 
which  was  so  soon  to  launch  the  tempest  of  wars  against 
all  that  bunch  of  private  interests  on  which  he  depended, 
and  to  destroy  it.  The  French  Crown  was  nothing  to  him, 
and  whether  in  Paris,  at  Versailles,  or  down  river  in  his 
great  country  house  at  Conflans,  the  French  nation  left  him 
careless.  He  was  lord  of  a  French  manor  in  Lorraine,  of 
another  near  his  chateau  on  the  river.  His  wines  were 
French,  and  marvellous,  and  cellared  in  15,000  bottles, 
which  the  peasants  of  the  Oise  drank  for  him  joy- 
fully in  '92  —  nothing  more  saddened  the  old  man  in  his 
exile  when  the  Revolution  was  on. 

His  horses  were  superb.  Even  of  coachmen  he  boasted 
two  —  each  beautiful  and  large;  each  equal  in  domestic 
rank. 

Unmarried,  he  maintained  with  dignity  an  opera-singer 
of  some  fame  and  of  the  refinement  customary  in  that  trade; 
at  the  close  of  his  life  he  left  upon  record  their  "close  and 
rooted  friendship." 

Such  was  the  man  who  for  nine  years  had  watched  his 
princess  as  she  grew  to  womanhood  and  at  last  to  mother- 
hood at  the  French  Court,  and  for  nine  years  had  sent 
those  long,  regular,  and  careful  letters  to  Maria  Theresa 
which  are  now  our  source  for  quite  half  the  history  of  the 
place  and  time.  His  life  also  was  at  a  crisis  and  a  change  in 
this  year  of  1780,  for  in  the  autumn  of  it  his  great  sovereign 
died. 

Maria  Theresa  was  sixty-three.  She  was  still  vigorous 
in  body,  powerful  in  voice,  alert  in  brahvJbut  for  many  years 
a  great  melancholy  had  not  abandoned  her.  She  had  con- 
tinually contemplated  her  husband's  tomb;  her  letters  to 


THE  CHILDREN  169 

her  children,  and  especially  to  the  Queen  of  France,  were 
full  at  the  last  of  an  approaching  silence.  The  Bavarian 
trouble  had  broken  her  ;  in  the  long  expectation  of  a  grandson 
to  the  French  throne  she  had  been  disappointed  ;  the  future 
of  her  daughter  had  terrified  her  —  for  she  saw  the 
gulf.  It  was  upon  the  24th  of  November  that  she  felt 
her  fatal  illness;  until  the  29th  she  wrote  and  dic- 
tated her  affairs  of  State,  and  on  that  very  date  wrote  at 
length  to  the  Queen.  Then  she  saw  Death  coming  visibly; 
she  staggered  into  a  chair,  and  with  words  of  rational 
charity  upon  her  lips  she  died. 

It  was  a  week  -  -  Wednesday,  the  6th  of  December  — 
before  the  news  could  reach  Versailles.  It  came  at  evening. 
Marie  Antoinette  saw  suddenly  receding,  as  the  sea  had 
receded  from  Lisbon  at  her  birth,  the  principal  aspect  of 
her  life.  The  memory  of  her  mother,  and  the  constant 
letters  —  scolding,  anxious,  loving,  or  imperious  —  had  been 
her  only  homely  thing  where  everything  around  her  had 
been  alien  and  increasingly  alien.  Her  mother  for  nine 
years,  her  mother  and  Mercy's  voice,  had  been  tangible:  q 
all  the  rest  was  strange.  That  deep  inner  part  which  she 
did  not  or  could  not  show,  which  she  herself  perhaps  did 
not  know,  and  which  appeared  but  three  times  upon  the 
surface  of  her  life,  rose  through  its  eager  and  not  profound 
levels  of  sense.  Her  whole  frame  was  broken;  she  spat 
blood.  She  put  herself  that  hour  in  black  of  every  kind 
disordered,  and  she  met  the  coming  year  charged  with  a 
sorrow  that  could  now  never  wholly  leave  her.  \But  that 
year_was^to  gjye-  her  the  two  chief  things  of  that  phase  in 
her  life  —  the  newof  a  successfulbattle  and  the  birth  of  a 


son;  and  a  third  —  the  wom^nMotte,  througlTwhom 
the  chief  of  her  evils  were  to  come  upon  her. 


170  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Far  off  in  Virginia,  La  Fayette  lay  at  Richmond  with  a 
handful  of  men.  Cornwallis  made  a  dash  for  him  and 
failed,  marched  back,  burning  and  plundering,  to  the  coast, 
received  a  confused  tangle  of  orders,  entered  Yorktown 
and  awaited  the  English  fleet.  Washington  had  heard  how 
Grasse  in  the  West  Indies  would  sail  with  the  French  fleet; 
he  marched  southward  to  join  the  French  commanders. 
With  him  was  young  Fersen,  who  for  so  long  had  not  seen 
France  and  who  was  there  volunteered  for  America:  with 
him  also  was  Rochambeau  and  all  his  men,  and  they  hurried 
to  victory  together  through  the  wet,  heavy  summer  of  1781 
along  the  Atlantic  plain. 

Meanwhile  in  Versailles  nothing  wTas  toward.  The 
Court  had  lost  its  old  gaiety  in  the  stress  of  the  war  and  of 
the  " economies."  The  Queen  awaited  and  implored  a  son. 
The  Emperor,  coming  in  July  1781,  for  the  second  time 
to  a  country  he  despised,  "found  much  improvement,"  was 
entertained  at  Trianon,  and  went  away.  It  was  August, 
hot,  drowsy,  and  silent;  it  was  September,  and  an  intense 
anxiety  for  the  birth  —  now  at  last,  if  it  might  be  —  of 
an  heir. 

And  as  that  September  passed,  two  things  came  into 
this  strange  life  upon  which  so  many  varied  things  arose 
and  joined  darkly  in  their  dates;  each  accident  was  quite 
unknown  to  the  Queen. 

The  first  was  this,  that  th£_J^ritish  fleet  coming  up  to 
save  Corirsjiallis^  found  Grasse-^alrgaSy  within  the  bay, 
was  b&ten  off,  and  with  it  the  chance  of  succour;  so  that 
La  Fayette  and  Washington  .meeting  could  and  did, 
just  as  the  month  e^ded,  lay^siege. 

The  second  was  this :  that  up  in  the  mountains  of  Alsace, 
a  lady,  a  friend,  introduced  a  younger  lady  and  a  poor  one 


THE  CHILDREN  171 

to  the  notice  of  the  Bishop  of  Strasburg.  He  was  that 
coadjutor  to  the  see,  now  succeeded  to  it,  whom  Marie 
Antoinette  had  seen  as  a  child — the  first  to  meet  her  in 
France  after  her  crossing  of  the  Rhine.  He  was  now 
the  Grand  Almoner,  and  was  spending  the  end  of  the  hot 
season  in  his  palace  of  Saverne.  It  was  thus  that  the 
woman  La  Motte  first  touched  her  victim,  the  Cardinal 
de  Rohan.  And  it  so  happened  that  the  Cardinal  de 
Rohan,  who  had  been  the  first  to  greet  the  Queen  on  her 
passage  of  the  Rhine  as  a  child,  now  aspired  to  be  her  lover, 
or  —  as  his  fatuous  misconception  of  her  would  have  put 
it — "one  of  her  lovers."  She  for  her  part  had  resolutely, 
avoided  him.  He  was  odious  to  her.  Upon  his  ambition) 
and  credulity  this  woman  La  Motte  was  to  play. 


It  had  been  upon  April  25  that  Cornwallis  in  the 
Carolinas  had  broken  camp  and  started  northward,  to 
conquer  and  to  hold  the  central  seaports  of  the  rebels,  as 
he  had  conquered  and  held  Charlestown.  .On  the  20th  of 
May  his  two  hundred  miles  were  marched,  and  he  had 
joined  the  troops  in  Virginia. 

That  march  was  not  followed  in  Versailles  —  and  even 
had  it  been  followed,  nothing  would  have  been  thought  of  its 
progress.  The  war  had  lingered  so  long,  the  issue  had  so 
dragged  that  no  chance  could  be  foreseen,  and  the  tangle 
of  those  wildernesses  without  roads,  hardly  with  towns,  was 
beyond  European  imagining.  They  knew  that  young  La 
Fayette  was  still  desolate  somewhere  there  —  they  knew  no 
more.  Fersen  —  if  more  than  his  bright  image  came  to 
her,  if  rumours  of  his  letters  home  could  come  to  her — 
must  have  given  the  woman  who  remembered  him  something 


172  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  his  own  lassitude:  cooped  up  as  was  that  Swede  in 
New  England,  without  supplies,  without  money,  cursing 
the  Americans,  telling  the  French  Cabinet  they  were  masters 
of  folly,  saying  the  Southern  States  were  conquered  by  the 
British,  and  complaining  with  a  Northern  complaint  of  the 
indiscipline  of  the  French.  But  there  was  greater  business 
to  engage  attention  at  Versailles;  the  Queen  was  again 

f  with  child ;  and JNecker,  failing  at  the  vast  financial  tangle, 
had  fallen. 

Just  as  Cornwallis  and  the  army  in  Virginia  met  to 
complete  the  war,  Necker  had  been  sent  back  from  his 
command  of  the  exchequer  to  those  private  'and  less 
reputable  dealings  with  which  the  Puritan  was  more 
familiar  and  at  which  he  was  more  successful  than  in  the 
/financing  of  a  military  nation.  The  Queen,  who  had  not 

I  driven  him  forth  at  all,  who  would  have  had  him  remain, 
was  blamed  because  she  did  not  save  him.  Trie  rising 
Democratic  opinion  of  Paris  had  already  vaguely  begun  to 
favour  Necker's  ineptitude :  he  was  a  foreigner ;  he  had  no 
faith  (save  the  Genevese  mask) ;  he  was  novel,  he  was 
a  change  —  he  was  therefore  demanded,  and  his  dishonesty 

»/was    not    comprehended;    yet    that    dishonesty    was    even 

•  then  about  to  cost  some  price  to  the  French  State,  for 
by  his  counsel  and  after  his  dismissal  appeared  that 
first  sham  Exchequer  Statement  to  deceive  the  nation, 
to  cajole  it  into  a  loan,  to  embitter  it  for  the  future;  and 
the  blame  of  the  trick  was  to  fall  on  the  Crown  and  not  on 
him,  its  author. 


It  was    October,  1781:   Cornwallis   was   surrounded    in 
Yorktown :  the  British  fleet  had  failed  to  relieve  him  and 


THE  COUNTESS  OF  PROVENCE 

From  the  bust  at  Versailles 


OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE  CHILDREN  173 

the  siege  advanced;  the  parallels  were  opened;  they 
were  firing  at  six  hundred  yards,  and  Cornwallis  still  held 
on.  The  third  week,  and  they  were  firing  at  three  hundred: 
two  redoubts  still  forbade  a  nearer  approach.  On  the 
14th,  the  two  redoubts  were. carried  by  the  French,  and 
next  day  came  the  storming. 

The  river  lay  near  a  mile  broad  behind  Yorktown:  he 
might  yet  cross  to  Gloucester;  his  guns  were  dismantled 
and  his  force  shattered,  more  by  sickness  than  by  fire, 
but  he  made  the  attempt,  and  the  wind  defeated  him.  Upon 
that  ominous  Friday,  the  19th,  he  laid  down  his  arms,  and 
England  had  lost  the  war.  By  an  accident  native  to  linger- 
ing campaigns,  a  series  of  chances  and  one  coincidence  at 
the  end  —  the  entry  of  the  French  fleet  —  had  suddenly 
determined  the  issue:  the  young  boys  of  the  French  Court, 
heretofore  grumbling  and  themselves  disliked,  were  sud- 
denly become  heroes;  the  colonists,  "half  savages,"  "mostly 
traitors  to  the  English,"  were  suddenly  become  "the  athletes 
of  Liberty" ;  many  in  England  and  all  the  Rivals  of  Eng- 
land made  up  their  minds  that  the  business  of  England 
was  at  an  end. 


It  was  Fersen,  with  his  command  of  French  and  English, 
who  had  negotiated  that  surrender.  Soon  he  would  return. 

At  Versailles  that  October  Friday  and  the  week-end 
following  it  were  still.  For  the  few  days  the  Court  was 
silent.  The  issue  of  the  expected  childbirth  had  been 
debated  or  feared;  it  was  now  not  mentioned  in  an 
intensity  of  expectation.  The  morning  of  the  Monday 
that  silence  continued.  The  King  had  ordered  his  Hunt ; 


174  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

four  of  the  carriages  were  already  started;  when  he 
bethought  him  before  he  left  to  see  the  Queen  again.  He 
thought  her  to  be  in  pain,  and  though  she  denied  the  pain, 
he  ordered  the  Hunt  to  return,  and  an  unusual  rumour 
and  press  at  once  filled  the  great  galleries.  It  was  a  little 
after  eleven  o'clock  when  the  passages  and  halls  were  full 
of  a  gathering  crowd,  and  the  cold  and  splendid  staircase 
which  made  the  royal  life  at  Versailles  a  public  thing,  a 
thing  of  the  open  air,  were  already  crammed  before  noon 
by  a  mob  of  the  populace;  but  this  time  custom  was  dis- 
dained and  the  doors  were  shut  fast.  Within  the  Queen 
lay  groaning  on  her  pallet-bed  before  the  fireplace,  but  there 
was  air  around  her:  no  such  press  as  had  all  but  killed 
her  three  years  before.  Yet_that_  exclusion  of  the  populace 
.helped  to  kill  the 


At  one  o'clock  a  Swedish  noble,  chancing  to  be  at  the 
Queen's  door,  was  told  the  news.  He  was  caught  and  electri- 
fied by  it  as  though  he"  had  been  of  the  French  blood.  He 
turned  to  the  first  woman  he  met  and  said:  "We  have  an 
heir!"  Now  that  woman  happened  to  be  Provence's  wife, 
and  the  scene  —  her  red  anger  and  her  disdain,  his  bewilder- 
ment —  were  taken  up  at  once  into  the  laughter  of  the 
moment.  All  the  world  laughed  or  cried;  it  was  like 
the  excitement  of  a  great  victory  turning  the  tide  of  a  dis- 
astrous war. 

The  Queen,  when  she  could  speak,  noting  the  silence 
round  her  pallet,  and  hearing  the  noise  without,  said  faintly 
and  smiling:  "I  have  been  a  good  patient.  .  .  .  Tell 
me  the  truth."  They  were  still  silent,  and  she  was  sure 
that  another  daughter  had  been  born,  till  the  King  came 
in  and  said  to  her:  — 

"The  Dauphin  begs  leave  to  come  in." 


VIII 
FIGARO 

MONDAY,  OCTOBER  22,  1781,  TO  APRIL  27,  1784 

THE  birth  of  an  heir  struck,  as  it  seemed,  an  epoch 
in  the  evident  transformation  of  the  Monarchy, 
and  in  the  increasing  position  which  Marie  Antoi- 
nette occupied  upon  that  scene;  not  that  such  a  birth  was 
either  unexpected  or  unlikely.  The  Court  and  the  nation 
had  known  for  now  three  years  that  the  royal  family  was 
established;  it  was  certain  that  children  would  now  support 
and  surround  the  throne,  and  even  in  the  preceding  year 
nothing  but  a  natural  accident  had  postponed  the  hope  of 
a  prince.  But  the  living  presence  of  the  child,  the  found- 
ing of  a  secure  succession  within  so  short  a  period  from 
the  earlier  disappointment,  had,  as  have  all  symbols,  an 
effect  greater  than  that  which  calculable  changes  could 
expect. 

A  wide  popular  enthusiasm,  though  later  it  was  extin- 
guished, did  for  the  moment  rise  spontaneously  to  the 
encouragement  of  Government,  and  that  initiative  which 
the  French  had  for  centuries  demanded  and  still  demanded 
from  the  custodians  of  their  State  was,  as  it  were,  thrust 
into  the  hand  of  Louis. 

Of  all  qualities  in  ruling  that  which  this  people  will  least 
forgive  is  ease:  n^4heirdelight  at  the  news  of  a  Dauphin, 
France,  and  particularlyParis,  implicitly  urged  td^energjT 
if  not  the  good-humoured  and  slow-thoughted  man  who 

175 


176  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

was  in  theory  the  whole  executive,  at  least  the  machinery 
of  which  he  was  the  centre.  A  new.  phase  of  one  sort  or 
another  had  certainly  begun. 

Sudden  causes  of  change  are  never  unaccompanied  by 
coincidence;  allied  forces  invariably  converge  upon  the 
main  cause  of  change  and  unite  for  a  common  effort.  Three 
such  advancing  supports  synchronised  in  these  last  months 
of  1781  — the  new  aspect  of  the  Austrian  Alliance,  the  suc- 
cess in  America,  and  the  death  of  old  Maurepas,  who  since 
the  accession  of  Louis  XVI.,  had  presided  at  the  Council. 
Each  of  these  accidents  was  singly  powerful;  in  their  com- 
bination they  were  irresistible;  and  a  moment  of  oppor- 
tunity to  which  a  man  of  rapid  decision  might  have  given 
the  greatest  effect,  was  apparent  even  to  Louis  in  the  close 
of  that  year. 

The  resnlt^of_Marifl.  Theretsa^sjdeath,  am^ofjpseph  II. 's 
itircolilfoiled  power  in  Austria^,  had  ^aoiffiL^niatured.  The 
naif  J^rt^ersTsleTTtr^e^nuty  of  the  Emperor  towards  the 
Faith  —  whose  doctrines  were  in  his  little  vision  as  bar- 
baric as  the  Gothic  architecture,  and  whose  rapid  elimination 
from  European  culture  he  took  for  granted  —  was,  if  not 
the  mainspring,  at  least  the  chief  expression  of  that  general 
action  whereby  he  imperilled  his  house  and  profoundly 
modified  the  situation  of  Austria.  His  preparation  to 
rob  and  destroy  the  religious  orders,  his  unconcealed  con- 
tempt for  the  ideal  they  represented,  his  similar  pretension 
that  patriotism  was  a  superstition,  his  petty  but  sincere 
conviction  that  none  save  material  benefits  guided  by 
moral  abstractions  were  of  use  to  mankind  —  in  a  word,  his 
despotic  jjlheism  —  culminated  in  an  "  Edict-of  Toleration^" 
which,  when  allowance  is  made  for  a  century's  development, 
may  be  compared  for  its  affront  against  the  customs  of  his 


FIGARO  177 

subjects  to  that  which  had  cost  James  II.  of  England  his 
throne.  In  itself  it  had  no  bearing  upon  France  and 
was  hardly  heard  of  in  that  country,  but  it  was  a  recanta- 
tion of  all  that  Maria  Theresa  had  stood  for;  it  meant 
an  open  admiration  for  Frederick  of  Prussia,  his  method 
and  his  principle;  it  argued  a  philosophy  which  would,  not 
reluctantly  and  of  necessity,  but  eagerly  and  of  set  purpose, 
overset  old  traditions  and  sacred  landmarks  that  had 
attempted  the  suppression  of  a  national  language  in  Hun- 
gary, and  was  to  suggest  time  and  again  as  a  simple  solution 
of  political  problems,  the  denial  of  all  that  for  which  men 
have  always  been  prepared  to  die. 

This  act,  the  precursor  and  the  type  of  so  many  others 
of  his,  was  signed  in  Vienna  during  that  same  month  of 
October,  1781,  which  saw  the  happy  delivery  of  his  sister 
at  Versailles,  and  the  culmination  of  the  American  War 
upon  the  Chesapeake.  Nay,  these  capital  events  fell 
within  one  week.  It  was  upon  a  Monday  that  the  Edict 
was  promulgated,  upon  the  following  Monday  that  the 
Dauphin  was  born,  upon  the  Friday  between  that  the  Eng- 
lish and  German  garrison  in  Yoj^townjaid^down.  jts  arms. 

The  success  of  the  war  in  America,  especially  the  dram- 
atic finale  ofCornwallis^s^urj^nder,  had  an  effect  upon 
opinion  in  Paris  which,  though  it  was  sudden  and  short, 
was  yet  very  powerful.  The  French,  having  of  all  nations 
by  far  the  most  general  experience  of  war,  are  slow  to  adven- 
tures of  such  a  kind  as  their  intervention  in  America:  the 
Court  had  been  especially  slow;  the  King  perhaps  the 
most  reluctant  of  all  --in  the  last  peril  of  death  he  exclaimed 
against  the  memory  of  that  campaign.  Once  engaged, 
therefore,  if  matters  had  gone  ill  (as  the  French  troops  in 
America  most  characteristically  swore  they  would  go  ill!), 


178  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

or  even  if  a  long  and  indefinite  campaign  had  dragged 
on  through  succeeding  years,  so  that  the  full  financial 
effect  of  the  struggle  could  have  been  felt  before  its  close, 
then  the  whole  weight  of  blame  would  have  fallen  upon 
Versailles.  As  it  was,  Yorktown  came  like  the  thrust  of 
a  spur,  and  the  Monarchy,  doubtful  as  was  its  course,  leapt 
forward. 

I  The  death  of  Maurepas  was  the  last  coincidence  of  these 
three;  it  was  as  exactly  synchronous  and  as  full  of  effect 
as  either  of  its  fellow  accidents.  The  capitulation  of  Lord 
Cornwallis  was  known  in  Paris  precisely  thirty-one 
days  after  it  had  taken  place.  It  was  upon  the  19th  of 
November,  a  Monday,  that  Louis  had  the  news.  The 
Queen  had  not  yet  risen  from  child-bed.  Louis  was  sit- 
ting with  her  in  her  room  when  the  Due  de  Lauzun  was 
announced,  and  gave  the  message  that  Yorktown  had  sur- 
rendered. Upon  the  Wednesday  following,  De  Maurepas 
was  dead.  The  importance  of  that  passing  lay  in  this, 
that  Louis,  at  such  a  juncture,  now  first  attempted  to  be 
free. 

All  men  are  chafed,  and  that  perpetually,  by  what  they 
know  of  their  own  defects,  and  Louis  could  not  forget, 
from  his  accession  onwards,  that  it  was  always  in  him  to 
yield  to  a  quicker  brain.  He  thought  it  shameful  in  a  King. 
He  never  yielded  from  weakness,  but  often  from  bewil- 
derment. His  own  decision  would  come  to  him  after  he 
had  acted  on  the  decision  of  another.  He  understood, 
he  desired  to  act,  later  than  did  his  advisers:  often  so  late 
that,  by  the  time  his  will  was  formed,  occasion  had  passed. 
If,  when  his  slow  judgment  had  matured,  he  found  it  dif- 
ferent from  tjfat  upon  which  immediate  action  had  been 
taken,  he  was  angered.  If  that  immediate  action  had 


FIGARO  179 

proved  disastrous,  he  was  secretly  indignant  that  his  slower 
wit  had  not  prevailed.  But,  stronger  than  all  these  reasons, 
the  mere  instinct  of  the  imperfect  warned  him  to  a  distaste 
of  guidance. 

He  had,  however,  come  to  the  throne  a  boy;  in  years  but 
twenty,  in  experience  (save  in  the  excellent  art  of  horse- 
manship) null.  He  had  found  ready  to  hand  his  old  min- 
ister, Maurepas,  courteous,  active,  with  a  good  though  a 
too  facile  judgment;  a  patriot  whose  career  had  been 
ruined  by  the  mistress  of  Louis  XV.  (in  itself  this  was  a 
recommendation  to  the  young  King),  and  a  courtier  whom 
his  father,  the  Dauphin,  had,  upon  his  deathbed,  pointed 
out  to  be  the  true  counterweight  to  the  irreligion  of  Choiseul : 
Louis  XVI.  had  accepted  such  a  guide  and  had  upon  the 
whole  not  repented  of  his  choice.  For  seven  years  the 
young  King  had  received  the  counsel  of  this  old  man;  a 
habit  had  been  formed,  and  a  strong  affection  with  it.  But 
as  Maurepas  approached  his  end,  as  the  gout  forbade  him 
his  former  clearness  of  thought,  and  a  continual  confine- 
ment interfered  with  his  attendance  at  the  Council,  the 
maturer  judgment  of  Louis  began,  though  secretly,  to 
assert  itself.  He  showed  for  the  depositary  of  so  lengthy 
a  Court  tradition  a  filial  devotion;  he  would  come  in  person, 
and  familiarly,  to  bring  news  to  the  old  man's  room  — 
notably  the  news  of  the  Dauphin's  birth  was  so  given, 
domestically  and  alone.  There  subsisted  between  them 
one  of  those  intimate  relations  which  so  often  arise  between 
the  permanent  official  upon  the  one  side,  and  the  respon- 
sible authority  upon  the  other:  it  became  a  personal  tie, 
and  when  Maurepas  died  Louis  would  renew  it  with  no  one. 
After  some  hesitation  the  King  lit  for  a  first  minister  upon 
Vergennes,  but  he  would  not  give  to  this  new  officer  the 


180  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

official  title;  he  was  jealous  of  a  fuller  power  which  he  now 
proposed  to  exercise  continuously  and  with  a  more  direct 
affirmation  than  in  the  past.  Louis  was  incapable  of  the 
task  he  so  attempted,  but  if  ever  there  was  a  time  in  the 
reign  when  such  a  task  could  be  attempted,  this  autumn 
ind  winter  of  1781  was  that  time. 

Here  then  was  the  field:  a  treasury  embarrassed,  but 
,  in  appearance  at  least,  by  a  frank  audit  —  for  the 
cooked  accounts  Necker  had  prepared  before  his  dismissal 
bore  that  aspect  and  title  of  a  public  audit ;  great  and  unex- 
pected success  in  a  doubtful  foreign  war;  a  monarch 
possessed  of  a  power  approaching  that  of  a  modern  Cabi- 
net, and  now  ready  to  experiment  with  that  power; 
abroad,  Joseph  II.,  who  was  the  chief  element  of  inter- 
national politics  and  the  national  ally  of  France,  had 
entered  upon  a  new  direction  of  the  Austrian  House.  Upon 
such  a  field  was  to  work  the  increasing  influence  of  the 
>ueen. 

It  is-lrtte-fehat  a  certain  part  of  her  repute  was  now  fixed 
fin  public^opidbirrtEat  she  was  extravagant,  that  she  was 

>und  toiSv^trrrt^57~Tn^F~sEe^ ^was  foreign.  The  legend 
tad  arisen  in  Paris,  and  no  detail  of  her  action,  no  appre- 
ciation of  complexity  could  easily  alter  the  simple  con- 
clusions of  the  Parisian  populace.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
she  was  the  mother  of  the  heir,  her  position  was  stable 
while  the  opinion  of  the  capital  was  not  so,  and  it  did  not 
seem  impossible  that  in  the  long  course  of  years  the  great 
and  dumb  national  mass  should  be  so  indoctrinated  in  her 
favour,  as  the  growth  of  her  children,  an  older  judgment 
in  her,  and  perhaps  a  continued  peace  and  a  return  to 
prosperity,  should  restore  the  tradition  of  the  monarchy, 
or  rather  confirm  it  in  its  new  characters. 


FIGARO  181 

If  the  King  was  now  ready  to  act  and  to  reform  the 
State,  Marie  Antoinette  was  of  far  more  influence  with 
him  than  ever  she  had  been  before.  It  was  hers,  if  she 
chose,  to  regulate  the  new  phase  of  Government.  She 
did  in  part  so  choose,  and  she  might  have  succeeded. 
Her  habits  would,  indeed,  have  continued  —  her  cards, 
her  theatre,  her  gems,  her  familiarity  —  but  all,  as  it 
were,  tinctured,  accepted,  taken  with  the  life  of  the  Court 
and  little  affecting  a  new-found  order.  Had  the  problems 
presented  to  her  been  of  those  that  fitted  her  intuition 
or  experience,  she  might  even  then  have  lifted  her  fate. 
For  a  year  and  for  more  than  a  year  —  all  1782  and  on 
into  1783 — the  solidity  of  her  position  was  assured;  the 
future  was  apparently  prepared.  A  group  of  trifling  in- 
cidents passed  her  quite,  or  almost,  unperceived  in  the 
midst  of  an  established  leadership  in  Europe,  of  royal  visits 
that  cemented  a  general  alliance,  and  of  accomplished 
hopes ;  another  year  passed,  she  was  presented  —  her  influ- 
ence being  then  at  its  height  —  with  the  affair  of  the 
Scheldt,  a  problem  in  which  the  interests  of  her  Austrian 
House  clashed  with  that  new  patriotism  which,  least 
of  all  things  French,  could  she  understand.  She 
blundered,  she  necessarily  blundered;  but  as  she  looked 
around  to  see  what  forces  were  left  her,  she  found  not 
only  the  results  of  that  blunder  confronting  her,  but 
an  appalling  menace  proceeding  from  a  direction  wholly 
unconnected  with  her  life  —  from  the  business  of  the 
diamond  necklace  —  and  beside  it,  grown  suddenly  quite 
loud  like  an  offensive  chorus  of  disdain,  the  voice 
of  a  writer  whom  she  had  half  patronized  and  wholly 
despised,  frKp  npgWWl  yf"ce  of  Caron — Bea""i  archaic*  hy 
the  beginning  of  '84S  one  of  those  accidents  —  the  pen  of 


182  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Beaumarchais  —  had  shaken  her  influence  and  that  of 
all  the  Monarchy;  by  the  end  of  '85  the  other  —  the  affair 
of  the  necklace  —  had  destroyed  it. 


The  year  1782  opened  upon  the  new  gladness  of  the 
Queen;  her  churching  at  Notre  Dame  (now  customary) 
was  marked,  if  not  by  a  vivid  popular  greeting  yet  by  no 
coldness.  At  the  Hotel  de  Ville  in  the  evening  she  met  an 
official  and  commercial  world  that  was  warmly  hers;  she 
shared  as  warmly  in  the  glories  of  the  American  news; 
she  would  have  driven  home  in  her  own  carriage  the  wife 
of  La  Fayette  to  show  her  enthusiasm  for  his  triumph  and 
his  return.  Her  ampler  manner,  her  more  contained  and 
settled  bearing,  was  consonant  with  the  position  she  had 
gained;  it  promised  her,  in  those  who  saw  and  approved 
it  among  the  magistracy  of  the  city,  a  continuance  and  an 
increase  of  influence.  Back  at  Versailles  she  continued 
without  scandal,  and  yet  at  a  fast-rising  expenditure,  the 
habits  which  had  now  become  permanently  hers:  new 
fashions  in  dress  perpetually  changing  and  in  head-dress, 
cards  to  the  small  hours ,  and  her  private  theatre  at  Trianon 
still  receiving  her  upon  its  stage  to  the  applause  now,  not  of 
a  half-dozen  or  so  of  the  royal  family,  but  of  a  full  audience ; 
many  courtiers,  many  friends  of  friends,  and  even  the  offi- 
cers of  the  Guard  were  permitted  to  see  her  painted  behind 
the  foot-lights,  to  note  her  true  rendering  of  vivacious  parts, 
and  to  accept  when  she  sang  her  imperfectly-trained, 
insufficient  and  somewhat  violent  voice.  Of  these  regu- 
lar dissipations  the  last  was  the  most  criticised,  though 
even  that  seemed  by  this  time  so  normal  that  of  itself  it 
did  not  lessen  her  growing  power;  but  in  distant  connection 


1     OF 


FIGARO  183 

with  her  taste  for  such  things  there  arose,  and  precisely 
at  this  critical  moment,  a  discussion  which  was  largely  to 
affect  her  life:  it  was  the  discussion  upon  the  "Mariage 
de  Fiaro' 


de  Figaro"  was  no  great  thing;  it  was  a 
well-written  play  from  the  pen  of  a  man,  now  advanced  in 
middle  age,  whose  diction  and  care  for  letters  were  typical  of 
his  own  time,  but  whose  vices  were  entirely  modern.  Born 
in  a  low  position,  his  darting  mind  had  carried  him  to  a  sort 
of  fluctuating  eminence,  especially  in  wit.  He  had  taught 
music  to  princesses,  married  an  infatuated  widow,  adopted 
her  name  of  Beaumarchais,  purchased  some  insignificant 
post  arid  with  it  a  nominal  right  to  the  "de"  of  nobility, 
preserved  his  health,  speculated,  probably  robbed,  certainly 
made  and  lost  considerable  sums,  traversed  and  thoroughly 
understood  English  society,  repaid  its  hospitality  by  advanc- 
ing the  American  cause  in  France,  speculated  upon  the 
commissariat  of  that  campaign,  rendered  jealous  years  ago 
the  equally  cynical  Voltaire,  and  now,  at  fifty,  was  getting 
talked  of  again  in  the  matter  of  his  new  play. 

He  and  it  were  little  things  to  Marie  Antoinette,  but  the 
rumour  of  them  was  considerable,  for,  a  few  months  before, 
at  the  end  of  the  past  year,  the  King  had  heard  that  this 
"Mariage  de  Figaro"  was  not  tolerable.  It  was  a  satire 
upon  all  established  things.  The  play  was  already  ordered 
for  the  Theatre  Frappa-is-  -T,miis  had  it  read  to  him  pri- 
vately, and  for  once  made  a  rapid  decision.  As  literature 
he  could  not  judge  its  considerable  merits;  as  politics  he 
put  his  foot  down:  such  laughter  at  such  an  expense  to  gov- 
ernment and  all  tradition  were  not  to  be  borne  —  and  the 
licence  was  withdrawn.  The  public  rumour  rose  and  grew. 

Every  witty  lady  about  the  Court  and  in  the  capital,  many 


184  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

more  who  desired  a  reputation  for  wit,  insisted  upon  read- 
ing the  play;  upon  hearing  it  read  aloud;  upon  having 
Beaumarchais  come  and  read  it  aloud.  All  the  Polignac 
world  was  mad  on  it.  Lomenie  de  Brienne  boasted  that 
he  had  heard  it  oftenest.  The  Princesse  de  Lamballe  moved 
heaven  and  earth  to  have  it  read  by  the  author  in  her  very 
rooms. 

The  "Mariage  de  Figaro"  was,  therefore,  to  the  Queen 
a  perpetual  phrase  on  the  lips  of  the  smart,  literary  and 
unliterary:  it  is  doubtful  if  she  read  a  line  of  it,  but  she 
heard  of  it  and  heard  of  it  again.  She  forgot  it  for 
the  moment;  later  she  remembered  it  again  -  -  not  to 
her  good. 

Meanwhile  a  much  larger  matter  vexed  her.  In  the  midst 
of  her  active  and  interested  life,  of  promotions,  personal 
successes  and  habitual  pleasures,  the  insistence  of  her 
brother  Joseph  continually  pursued  her,  and  a  mixed 
anxiety,  an  anxiety  to  be  political,  an  anxiety  to  escape 
responsibility,  came  to  her  almost  daily — from  Mercy  imme- 
diately, ultimately  from  Vienna:  she  felt  upon  her  the 
uneasy  burden  of  the  Hapsburgs. 

While  her  mother  still  lived  there  had  at  least  been 
between  her  and  Marie  Antoinette  an  unbroken  habit  of 
command  upon  the  one  side,  obedience  and  protest  upon 
the  other.  The  pressure  of  Vienna  had  been  a  natural 
one  then.  Maria  Theresa  possessed,  moreover,  the  tact  not 
only  of  a  woman,  and  of  a  religious  woman,  but  the  large 
vision  of  a  careful  and  perilous  diplomacy  brought  to 
success.  Joseph  lacked  all  these:  religion,  honour,  tact, 
acquaintance,  experience.  His  commands  to  Mercy  were 
as  crude  as  any  of  his  judgments  upon  [the  world:  "Had 
Mercy  seen  the  Queen?"  "Was  she  doing  her  duty  by  the 


FIGARO  185 

House  of  Austria?"  "Would  Mercy  suggest  this,  that?" 
"Since  the  Queen  was  so  powerful  with  the  King,  why  had 
this,  that  detail  of  French  policy  not  exactly  suited  the 
demands  of  the  Empire  ?  "  Broken  by  the  buffer  of  Mercy's 
long  experience  these  arid  and  unfruitful  hastes  came  less 
brutally  to  the  ears  of  Marie  Antoinette.  She  never  felt 
herself  the  servant  of  her  family,  nor  in  direct  antagonism 
to  the  Crown  of  her  husband;  she  felt  only  that  she  was 
perpetually  required  to  be  doing  —  she  hardly  knew  what  - 
much  as  in  her  mother's  time,  but  without  the  aid  of  her 
mother's  handwriting  and  remembered  voice;  certainly 
without  her  mother's  wisdom  to  control. 

The  pressure  from  Joseph  II.  continued;  it  was  to  be  two 
years  before  it  took  effect  in  a  great  matter,  but  when  that 
matter  arose  the  Queen's  plain  service  to  Vienna  —  some- 
thing far  in  excess  of  what  she  had  shown  in  the  Bava- 
rian affair  —  showed  how  much  that  irksome  and  long 
pressure  had  effected.  She  came .  to  act  as  an  Austrian 
army  would  have  acted,  and  quite  understanding  all  she 
did,  she  came  very  near  to  betraying  her  allegiance  to  the 
French  throne. 

For  the  rest  these  early  months  of  '82  were  filled,  among 
her  pleasures  and  her  rising  power,  with  other  annoyances; 
notably  that  from  time  to  time  her  friends  in  that  exces- 
sive society  of  hers  spoke  to  her  of  their  debts,  and  she 
knew  well  that  in  the  matter  of  money  grants  at  that 
moment  of  increasing  embarrassment  in  public  finance  the 
King  himself  was  slow  to  listen  to  her. 

There  were  many  such  friends.  The  greatest  and  the 
nearest  perhaps  of  those  whom  Marie  Antoinette  knew  to 
be  embarrassed  were  the  Guemenees,  and  the  Duchesse  de 
Guemenee,  the  titular  governess  of  the  Dauphin,  a  woman 


186  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

whom  she  met  most  constantly  and  cherished,  closely  con- 
cerned her. 

fShe  further  suffered  the  ceaseless  and  recurrent  advances 
the  Cardinal  de  Rohan.  It  had  become  enough  for  her 
to  see  his  handwriting  upon  a  note  to  make  her  burn  the 
thing  unread.  Her  dislikes  were  now  often  reasoned,  always 
steady;  it  was  enough  that  she  had  to  meet  the  Grand 
Almoner  upon  State  occasions  of  religion  or  ceremonial ;  her 
society  she  forbade  him.  Had  the  Cardinal  wanted  proof 
of  that  stupidity  which  he  was  later  to  plead  in  Court  as 
the  excuse  of  his  follies,  he  could  have  given  none  better, 
nor  any  of  more  weight  with  posterity,  than  his  complete 
ignorance  of  such  a  woman  as  was  this  daughter  of  Maria 
Theresa*,  and  his  absurd  advances  to  gain  her  intimacy,  her 
support,  and  possibly  her  heart.  Had  he  known  women 
even  vaguely,  by  types,  this  florid  and  handsome  man  would 
have  abandoned  at  fifty  the  attempt  to  interest  a  vital, 
impetuous  woman  of  twenty-seven,  loving  swift  pleasure, 
but  superior  to  him  in  rank,  chaste,  a  mother,  and  carrying 
against  him  in  particular  a  traditional  grudge  for  the  loose 
jests  which,  during  a  brief  embassy  at  Vienna,  he  was  wont 
to  pass  at  the  expense  of  her  own  people.  B;u£-thir  Cardinal 
de  Rohanjdid  not  know-women  evee-iajhe  mass,  and  it 
waSnecessary,  as  he  thought,  that  he  should  play  cards 
with  her  and  be  from  time  to  time  one  of  the  fifty  or  so 
who  eat  supper  with  her  at  Trianon.  He  had  the  weakness 
of  stupid  men  when  they  are  well  born  and  have  attained 
office  —  I  mean  the  ambition  for  political  titles. 

A  thousand  lesser  incidents  of  this  time  she  could  not 
herself,  had  you  asked  her  daily,  have  recorded.  One 
among  such  petty  details  it  is  worth  the  reader's  while  to 
recall,  though  it  had  made  upon  her  even  less  impression 


FIGARO  187 

than  the  babble  about  Beaumarchais'  play;  though  it 
passed  completely  from  her  memory.  It  was  the  presence 
now  and  then  upon  the  stairways  of  Versailles,  and  for 
moments  only,  of  a  short  woman,  very  fair,  with  a  small, 
well-arched  foot,  and  delicate  hands,  quick  and  even  fur- 
tive of  glance,  not  beautiful  but  attractive  and  provoking 
in  face,  dressed  in  a  manner  that  combined  excess  with  the 
evidences  of  poverty,  but  in  her  gestures  of  a  passable  breed- 
ing. This  figure  was  often  seen;  now  leaving  the  room 
of  some  lady  of  the  Court,  now  crossing  the  courtyard  on 
foot  towards  the  town. 

The  Queen  may  or  may  not  have  heard  that  this  woman, 
though  an  adventuress,  was  (from  over  the  left)  a  Valois;  of 
some  birth,  therefore,  but  very  poor,  and  given  to  Borrowing 
small  sums:  Marie  Antoinette's  sister-in-law  of  Provence, 
Madame,  may  or  may  not  have  told  the  Queen  that  she 
had  got  this  woman  a  tiny  advance  of  thirty  pounds  upon 
her  tiny  pension  of  twenty-four.  Whether  her  name  of  "De 
la  Motte,"  or  so  much  as  the  presence  of  this  chance  passer, 
was  noted  by  Marie  Antoinette  is  not  known,  but  cer- 
tainly if  either  were  it  took  no  more  place  in  her  mind  than 
any  other  of  the  hundred  insignificant  names  she  heard 
and  forgot  every  day.  Moreover,  after  the  early  spring  of 
1782,  this  woman  was  no  longer  seen  at  Versailles;  she  had 
borrowed  a  few  pounds,  and  was  gone. 

With  May  the  true  life  of  the  Court  and  the  active  inter- 
ests of  the  Queen  awoke  to  receive  the  first  of  those  great 
political  visits  which  form  the  historical  pageant  of  Ver- 
sailles: the  heir  of  Catherine  of  Russia  came  with  his  wife, 
and  the  whole  year  might  almost  have  been  named  from  so 
conspicuous  an  event. 

The  inordinate  pomp  of  royalty  in  its  old  age  had  led  to 


188  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  fashion  of  incognito  which  did  not  have,  and  was  not 
intended  to  have,  its  occasional  modern  effect  of  privacy, 
but  which,  by  cutting  short  interminable  and  necessary 
ritual,  left  a  crowned  traveller  the  freer  for  luxury  and 
dissipation.  It  saved  them  the  judges,  the  orators,  the 
Governors,  the  Universities  —  in  general  the  middle  classes, 
and  left  them  free  for  actors,  wine,  and  their  own  com- 
pany, and  the  frenzied  plaudits  of  the  innumerable  poor. 
The  Emperor  of  Austria  had  set  the  fashion  five  years 
before;  it  was  followed  now  by  the  Russian  Court,  and 
Catherine's  son  chose  to  present  himself  in  France  under 
the  somewhat  theatrical  alias  of  the  "Comte  du  Nord." 

The  Grand-Duke  Paul  had  the  face  of  a  Tartar,  and  — 
what  was  piquant — the  manners,  and,  above  all,  the  ready 
epigrams  of  a  Parisian.  His  wife  was  a  huge  German 
woman,  rather  absolute  and  —  what  was  curious  — 
learned.  For  exactly  a  month  they  dominated  the  Court  of 
France;  from  the  end  of  May  to  the  end  of  June  they  filled 
it  with  their  presence,  and  not  a  little  of  the  hankering  after 
French  things  and  French  alliances,  which,  much  later, 
distinguished  Paul  III.  during  the  revolutionary  wars,  may 
have  sprung  from  this  short  and  vivid  episode  of  his  twenty- 
eighth  year. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Marie  Antoinette  that  the  pros- 
pect of  a  great  encounter  and  of  the  society  of  equals  con- 
fused her;  it  is  equally  characteristic  of  her  that  once 
she  had  got  over  that  nervousness  she  drew  the  young  man 
and  his  wife  at  once  into  that  rather  isolated  and  over- 
familiar  circle  of  intimates  with  which  Mercy,  her  brother, 
and  the  French  reproached  her,  but  without  which,  as  it 
seemed,  she  could  not  live.  Behind  the  solemn  and  rare 
functions,  the  regal  hospitality  of  the  Condes  at  Chantilly 


FIGARO  189 

and  the  Court  ball  at  Versailles,  was  a  whole  atmosphere 
of  gambling  and  private  theatricals;  of  plays  at  Trianon, 
intimate  suppers,  costly  presents  given  at  a  moment's 
thought,  and,  very  late  at  night,  in  the  rooms  of  Madame  de 
Polignac  or  in  the  Queen's,  when  the  King  had  left  them,  a 
complete  ease  full  of  little  improvised  dances  and  familiar 
jests.  In  such  an  atmosphere  the  German  Grand-Duchess 
maintained,  perhaps  a  little  stiffly,  her  formal  compliments, 
but  the  Russian  Grand-Duke  went  headlong;  he  suffered 
the  spell;  there  was  even  a  moment  when  he  confided  to 
the  Queen  his  humiliation  at  home  and  the  tyranny  of  his 
mother  Catherine. 

Upon  one  matter  the  husband  and  the  wife  most  cer- 
tainly agreed,  for  to  the  second  it  was  belles-lettres,  to  the 
first  Paris iana:  they  must  have  things  read  to  them  "by  the 
authors."  All  the  little  tricks  with  which  the  wealthy 
and  leisured  inveigle  the  masters  of  the  pen  to  visit 
their  palaces,  to  amuse  them  for  an  hour,  were  set  at  work. 

Of  the  many  so  caught  one  was  especially  demanded, 
and  the  Queen  heard  again,  not  without  boredom,  the  per- 
petual name  of  Beaumarchais.  "Oh,  yes,  you  must  hear 
Beaumarchais ! "  Madame  de  Lamballe  had  got  him  to 
her  rooms.  It  was  difficult,  but  she  had  got  him.  The 
Archbishop  of  Toulouse  knew  him  well.  He  was  splen- 
did. 'You  must  hear  him  read  this  play  of  his;  it  has  been 
forbidden,  you  know.  It  is  seditious.  It  is  so  witty, 
and  he  does  read  it  so  well! "  The  Comte  du  Nord  and  his 
wife  asked  no  better  than  to  be  in  the  swim.  Beaumarchais 
was  willing  enough;  he  came  and  read  to  them,  and  they 
heard  from  his  thin  ironic  lips,  saw  illustrated  by  his  exact 
gesture  and  brilliant,  ambitious  little  eyes,  the  edge  and 
sharpness  of  a  drama  that  worked  —  once  it  was  public  — 


190  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

like  an  acid,  to  the  destruction  of  all  their  world.     How 
they  applauded! 

That  warm  month  of  long  evenings  that  fade  into  early 
dawns  shining  with  lamps  in  the  park,  with  candles  and 
mirrors  in  the  vast  length  of  the  palace,  was  approaching 
its  end,  when,  for  the  last  time,  Marie  Antoinette  devised 
her  last  considerable  fete  —  once  more  at  Trianon. 

It  was  to  be  a  garden  fete  at  night:  by  this  time  certainly 
wearisome  to  the  Grand-Duchess,  but  to  the  Grand-Duke 
attractive  —  with  this  one  flaw,  that  on  the  morrow  he  would 
be  gone.  The  fete  was  held;  it  was  brilliant  and  full. 
At  its  close  when,  as  custom  demanded,  the  royal  party 
passed  out,  down  a  lane  of  guests  on  either  side,  the  Queen 
saw  —  for  a  moment  —  a  pair  of  red  stockings;  the  legs 
were  neither  meagre  nor  young.  All  the  rest  of  the  figure 
was  a  large  dark  cloak,  but  she  caught  beneath  the  hat  of 
it  the  somewhat  flushed  and  large  face  of  the  Qrand  Almoner. 

This  little  incident  disturbed  her.  Here  was  a  private 
gala  of  her  own,  given  only  to  those  of  her  private  circle 
privately  invited  by  her,  and  this  odious  man  must  creep  in. 
Next  day  when  her  guests  were  gone  she  spent  some  por- 
tion of  her  considerable  energy  in  ferreting  out  the  culprit. 
The  incident  was  traced  to  the  lodge-keeper  of  Trianon, 
who  had  taken  a  bribe  from  the  cardinal  under  a  promise 
that  if  he  were  let  in  he  would  keep  a  strict  disguise  and 
would  not  penetrate  into  the  gardens.  The  lodge-keeper 
was  sent  his ""way  to  starve,  and  later  —  since  he  really  did 
begin  to  starve  —  was  given  back  his  place  by  this  impul- 
sive woman. 

It  was  a  very  little  though  a  very  exasperating  incident 
that  a  great  officer  of  the  Crown,  whom  etiquette  com- 
pelled her  to  meet  in  chapel,  but  whom  she  had  carefully 


FIGARO  191 

excluded  from  her  intimacy  and  her  privileges,  should  have 
appeared  by  a  trick  at  a  party  so  especially  her  own.  Per- 
haps she  remembered  it  as  one  remembers  for  a  long  while 
petty  accidents  that  have  sharply  moved  us  for  an  hour. 
He  certainly  remembered  it,  for  he  had  been  found  out  in 
no  very  dignified  manoeuvres.  He*  was  certainly  sore; 
but  in  men  of  his  stupidity,  of  his  privileges,  and  of  his 
habits  of  luxury,  hatred  is  no  enduring  passion.  His  ambi- 
tion, however,  such  as  it  was,  remained;  he  was  the 
more  determined  to  succeed  in  that  high  object  of 
recognition  and  of  friendship  with  the  Queen,  from  the 
results  of  this  disastrous  attempt  and  from  the  failure  of 

his  appearance  on  that  June  night  at  Trianon 

It  was  but  a  week  later  that  Madame  de  la  Motte  came  into 
Paris,  called  at  his  palace  in  the  Marais,  and  reminded 
him  of  his  earlier  charities. 

The  uneventful  summer  came  and  passed,  full  of  the 
customary  glories,  of  the  customary  distractions.  No  date 
marked  evil  or  good.  The  American  War,  though  it  lan- 
guished, was  now  decided,  and  England  had  given  up  the 
struggle.  The  reform  of  the  French  finances,  though  cease- 
lessly a  topic  of  council,  was  as  ceaselessly  neglected.  The 
Emperor  continues  to  badger  Mercy,  and  Mercy  to  badger 
the  Queen  upon  matters  of  no  importance  save  to  Joseph 
II.'s  ill-considered  plans  of  aggrandisement. 

Fersen,  pottering  between  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore, 
wrote  home  —  wearily  —  but  not  to  her. 

•  ••••••• 

It  was  a  long  summer  of  nothingness,  during  which1* 
Marie  Antoinette's  position  was  confirmed,  her  public  view 


192  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  trifle,  if  but  a  trifle,  enlarged.  With  her  habits  permitted, 
her  popularity  sufficient,  her  influence  established,  she 
had  a  foretaste  of  that  security  such  as  should  accom- 
pany middle  life,  and  such  as  is  native  to  women  for  whom 
such  satisfaction  is  allied  with  maternity ;  she  turned  for  an 
added  interest  to  her  children. 

The  little  Princess  Royal  could  talk  and  run;  the  baby 
Dauphin  knew  his  sister  already  and  moved  his  arms  at 
her  approach.  The  two  children  between  them  filled  daily 
a  larger  and  more  natural  place  in  the  Queen's  thoughts. 
They  could  not  indeed  weaken  the  habits  which  those 
first  feverish  three  years  had  rooted  and  the  next  had  done 
nothing  to  destroy,  but  their  innocence  and  the  nameless 
bond  of  flesh  enlarged  her;  their  growth,  their  surprising 
discovery  of  new  days.  It  was  not  wholly  without  reason 
that  the  King  their  father  grew  at  this  moment  to  listen 
in  smaller  things  to  her  advice  beyond  that  of  others. 

Ceremonial,  or  rather  lucrative,  as  were  the  functions 
of  the  Princesse  de  Guemenee,  she  was  yet  constantly 
in  attendance  upon  the  children,  of  which  she  was  titular 
governess,  and  the  Queen  was  constantly  in  her  society. 
The  charge  was  a  great  one;  if  it  had  first  been  granted  as 
a  favour  to  one  of  the  set  of  favourites,  it  had  now  ripened 
into  something  more,  for  the  common  interest  in  such  a 
couple  as  Madame  Royale  and  the  heir  gave  rise,  in  this 
middle  of  '82,  to  an  occasional  communion  between  the 
Queen  and  the  gouvernante,  which  neither  found  in  the 
general  and  much  more  continual  amusement  of  their  set. 
Their  intimacy  was  the  greater  that  the  children  had  been 
sent  through  the  park  to  Trianon  during  the  hot  weather, 
that  the  Princesse  de  Guemenee  was  with  them  secluded 
there,  and  that  there  she  and  the  Queen  were  necessarily 


FIGARO  193 

often  alone  together.     In  her  favourite  retreat  and  under  her 
domestic  trees,  the  approaching  vaccination  of  the  little  girl— 
a  matter  of  moment  at  that  time  —  and  a  dozen  details  of 
the  sort  concerned  them.     By  a  petty  accident  of  a  sort 
common    to    aristocracies,    the    Cardinal    de    Rohan,    the 
Queen's  aversion,  happened  to  be  own  brother  to  Madame 
de  Guemenee,  the  Queen's  chief  friend.     Not  a  word  was 
said  in  favour  of  that  brother,  for  these  were  matters  uponrA 
which  even  the  Queen's  favourites  were  compelled  to  keep    \ 
silence;  but  the  populace,    who  do   not  understand   such     \~s 
complexities,  remembered  the  relationship. 

The  complaints  of  the  lesser  woman  upon  the  debts  of 
herself  and  her  husband  —  though  such  complaints  are 
wearing  to  the  closest  friendships  —  did  no  more  than 
slightly  weary  the  Queen.  They  were  soon  forgotten,  for 
Marie  Antoinette  held  in  a  profound  manner  that  faith  in 
chance  good  fortunes  and  in  ultimate  relief  without  which 
those  who  never  labour  could  not  live;  and  when  the  com- 
plaints were  done  with,  she  turned  to  speak  of  the  children. 

So  August  went  by  and  most  of  September,  when,  one 
morning  at  the  close  of  that  month,  Monsieur  de  Guemenee 
very  suddenly  declared  that  he  could  not  so  much  as  attempt 
to  pay  his  debts,  and  threw  himself  upon  his  creditors. 

It  was  a  shock.  I  hav^regeatedjy4nsisfed  in  this  book 
upon  the  insignificance  of  French  extravagance  in  the  close 
of  the  eightegntE~cenIu^rinc^inparison  with  the  modern 
figures  of  our  Plutocracy,  and  on  the  modesty  of  the  sums 
the  historian  has  tc^deaLsdth— ^5^000  a  year  was  a  princely 
fortune;  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan's  .£30,000  a  year  seemed 
almost  the  revenue  of  a  State,  an  income  beyond  com- 
putation. Well,  in  such  a  world,  accustomed  to  such  a 
scale  of  wealth,  the  Guemenees  went  bankrupt  for  a  solid 


194  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

million  of  our  English  pounds.  It  opened  a  whirlpool 
in  the  finances  of  the  time,  and  the  creditors,  to  make  mat- 
ters worse,  were  of  every  rank  and  spread  throughout  the 
kingdom;  there  were  peasants  among  them,  prelates,  far- 
mers-general, and  —  most  clamorous  of  all  —  a  few 
large  and  many  small  shopkeepers  of  Paris.  To  these 
last  —  especially  to  the  smaller  ones  —  delay  would  be 
fatal.  Delay  was  precisely  the  expedient  chosen. 

There  exists  a  little,  ill-written  scrawl  addressed  to  the 
princess;  it  is  ill-spelt,  with  words  omitted  in  its  haste. 
It  runs:  "You  have*  heard  that  my  daughter's  vaccination 
has  gone  off  well  —  I  breathe  again!  .  .  .  The  King 
will  see  you  get  those  letters  all  right."  That  scrawl  was 
written  by  Marie  Antoinette  and  the  "letters"  mentioned 
were  the  Moratorium  which  a  French  King  could  of  his 
own  free  will  impose  as  might  the  caprice  of  a  judge 
upon  the  process  of  law.  It  was  a  royal  decree  forbidding 
during  the  King's  pleasure  the  recovery  of  a  debt.  The 
creditors  must  wait  till  it  was  lifted. 

That  little  scrap  of  paper  was  not  known  to  the  populace  — 
it  was  not  discovered  till  a  few  years  ago  —  but  the  populace, 
with  an  instinct  that  rarely  failed  them  during  the  pre- 
revolutionary  and  revolutionary  time,  guessed  by  what 
influence  had  been  granted  this  privilege  of  delay;  with  all 
its  fatal  consequences  to  the  smaller  folk,  who  spread  their 
anger  until  Paris  was  humming  with  it,  and  even  the  remoter 
provinces  (notably  Brittany),  wherever  there  was  a 
wretched  unpaid  creditor  to  be  found,  whispered  the 
name  of  the  Queen. 

She,  upon  her  part,  felt  she  had  done  next  to  nothing  — 
an  obvious  and  small  act  of  courtesy  for  a  dear  friend. 
She  had  chosen  that  very  moment  to  be  at  La  Muette  with 


FIGARO  195 

the  Court  —  not  at  Versailles,  to  which  such  things  were 
native,  but  right  at  the  gates  of  Paris,  and  there  thought 
fit  to  do  something  more  for  her  friend  than  the  trifle  already 
effected.  She  went  to  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
Fleury  —  at  a  time  when  the  Treasury  in  its  deep  embar- 
rassment was  expecting  the  counter-shock  of  the  Amer- 
ican War,  at  a  time  when  the  last  additional  taxes  could 
hardly  be  paid  —  to  ask  him  if  (irony  of  ignorance!)  "some- 
thing could  not  be  done"  for  the  Guemenees.  Fleury  could 
do  nothing,  and  it  was  as  well. 

All  this  while  and  all  that  summer  and  autumn  the  little,      / 
active,  furtive  woman,  De  La  Motte,  the  Valois  with  the     / 
well-arched  foot  and  the  shifty  but  provocative  eye,  was 
pecking  at  De  Rohan :  now  knocking  discreetly  at  his  palace 
doors  in  Paris,  now  travelling,  as  cheaply  as  could  be,  to  his 
great  chateau  in  the  Vosges  —  borrowing  a  few  pounds,  and 
again  a  few  pounds.     It  was  a  very  little  thing,  like  a  drift- 
ing rag  in  a  great  city  —  but  a  rag  infected  with  the  plague. 

In  such  a  commotion  as  the  crash  of  the  Guemenees 
made,  no  one  noticed  that  the  Queen  procured  for  her 
chief  friend,  for  one  who  hardly  desired  it  and  who  was 
ill  fitted  for  it,  for  Madame  de  Polignac,  the  high  post 
which  Madame  de  Guemenee  had  been  compelled  to  resign. 
The  new  charges  such  an  appointment  involved  were  for- 
gotten in  the  torrent  of  feeling  that  followed  the  great  bank- 
ruptcy. It  came  just  as  the  excitement  upon  America  had 
thoroughly  died  down,  just  as  the  bills  for  that  war  had 
to  be  met,  and  just  as  winter  was  upon  the  populace.  The 
new  taxes  were  collecting,  the  whole  financial  system  was 


196  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

at  a  breaking  point,  when  early  in  '83,  Fleury  resigned 
the  finances.  His  fall  was  furthered  by  the  Queen,  who 
remembered  his  refusal. 

If,  a  year  before,  the  satire  of  Beaumarchais  had  been 
wisely  suppressed  by  the  King,  and  if  nine  months  before, 
even  the  reading  by  heirs  apparent  of  so  fierce  a  piece  of 
wit  was  thought  hazardous,  now  it  was  plainly  a  peril. 
To  extend  the  fame  of  that  solvent  of  society,  even  by  dis- 
creet recitations  within  the  palace  was  unwise;  to  act  it, 
to  add  to  its  native  force  of  aggression  gesture,  life,  and 
publicity  of  the  stage,  would  be  a  piece  of  madness.  Most 
ardently  was  that  amusing  piece  of  madness  desired  by  the 
lassitude  of  the  Court  and  by  those  amateurs  in  changing 
pastime  who  surrounded  the  Queen.  It  is  said  that  she 
pleaded  again  for  her  friends,  and  begged,  as  she  had  before, 
f6r  the  piece  to  be  licensed.  If  she  did  so,  she  failed;  for 
leave  to  act  the  "  Mariage  de  Figaro,"  even  upon  the  private 
stage  of  a  courtier,  was  again  refused. 

Side  by  side  with  such  details  went  the  growth  of  yet 
another  great  European  conflict,  and  with  it  once  again  the 
pressure  of  Austria  upon  Marie  Antoinette. 

For  over  a  century  the  Scheldt  had  been  closed  to  com- 
merce by  international  treaty,  and  the  trade  that  should 
naturally  flow  along  that  magnificent  estuary  of  which 
Antwerp  is  the  port  had  been  artificially  deflected  to  Hol- 
land. The  Austrian  Netherlands  were  therefore  mechan- 
ically starved  of  a  trade  that  had  once  been  pre-eminent 
in  Europe.  It  was  as  though  Lancashire  should  be  for- 
bidden by  a  parchment  to  use  Liverpool  to-day,  and  should 
be  dependent  upon  Preston  or  —  as  would  more  probably 
follow  —  upon  Bristol  and  Glasgow.  That  part  of  the 
Low  Countries  which  is,  roughly  speaking,  the  Catholic 


FIGARO  197 

part  and  most  of  which  is  now  included  in  Belgium  formed, 
by  an  accident  of  history,  an  isolated  fragment  of  the  Haps- 
burg  domain,  and  the  closing  of  the  Scheldt  acutely  affected 
a  monarch  whose  mind,  being  narrow,  was  especially  alive 
to  anomalies  that  interfered  with  the  rotundity  of  his  rights. 
There  was  to  Joseph  II.  something  monstrous  in  the  decay 
of  Antwerp  and  the  silence  of  that  vast  waterway  —  some- 
thing out  of  nature,  like  the  diversity  of  tongues,  within  his 
empire;  it  was  a  sentiment  he  felt  less  keenly  in  matters 
less  disadvantageous  to  himself. 

The  chief  beneficiary  by  this  quaint  artifice  was,  of 
course,  Holland,  but,  among  the  greater  powers,  England. 
If  anyone  would  know  why,  he  has  but  to  travel  to-day 
from  the  Pool  of  London  to  Antwerp,  and  wonder  next 
morning  at  the  orderly  and  teeming  crescent  of  the  quays. 
Antwerp  is  London's  chief  and  most  dangerous  rival. 

It  was,  therefore,  during  the  failure  of  England  in  America 
that  Joseph  proposed  the  destruction  of  so  ancient  an 
instrument  as  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  and  determined 
upon  the  opening  of  the  river.  To  such  a  project  the  assent 
of  France  was  essential,  but  the  Cabinet  of  Versailles,  in 
one  of  those  acts  of  wisdom  which  were  not  unknown  to 
the  decaying  Monarchy,  postponed  the  discussion  to  the 
close  of  the  war.  The  war  had  been  over  since  the  autumn 
of  '82 ;  the  peace  had  been  signed  at  Paris  in  the  new  year. 
It  was  in  1783,,  therefore,  that  there  began  the  growing 
pressure  of  Joseph  II.  upon  Mercy,  of  Mercy  upon  IV^ajie 
Antoinette,  to  see  that  the  interests  of  Austria  in  this  matter, 
as  in  others  of  the  past,  should  predominate  at  Versailles. 
This  purely  Austrian  move,  though  it  took  months  to 
mature,  was  the  political  motive  of  the  whole  year,  and 
side  by  side  with  it,  like  a  tiny  instrument  accompanying 


198  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  loud  orchestra,  went  the  rising  popular  demand  for 
Beaumarchais*  play:  also,  just  once  or  twice  and  for  a 
moment  only,  one  can  hear  in  the  background  the  occa- 
sional note  of  Madame  de  La  Motte.  Thus  on  Candlemas 
Day  (a  feast  of  the  2d  of  February)  she  was  seen  at  Ver- 
sailles. It  was  a  brief  episode;  she  stood  patiently  in  the 
rank  of  petitioners  waiting  for  the  Queen  to  pass  upon  her 
way  to  High  Mass,  and  presented  some  modest  demand  - 
directly  or  indirectly  —  for  money.  It  was  refused,  with  a 
crowd  of  others,  by  the  secretaries  appointed  to  examine 
such  things;  and,  if  the  Queen's  eyes  had  rested  upon  her 
face  at  all,  no  sort  of  impression  of  her  remained.  The 
Queen  entered  the  chapel,  and  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan 
pontificated  there. 

"Figaro"  was  more  amusing  and  deserves  a  greater 
mention.  All  the  jokes  of  the  spring  and  all  the  society 
question  was  of  "Figaro."  By  June,  somehow  or  other,  by 
some  intrigue,  very  possibly  by  a  word  from  the  Queen, 
the  scandalous,  the  delightfully  tickling  attack  upon  all 
their  privileges,  their  scandals  —  their  very  life ;  the  comedy 
that  half  of  them  already  knew  by  heart,  and  from  which 
the  younger  could  recite  whole  passages  in  Beaumarchais' 
very  manner,  was  to  be  acted  at  last  —  but  only  for  the 
Court.  Of  course,  such  a  scandal  could  not  be  allowed  in 
Paris,  or  in  the  town.  The  Hall  of  the  Menus  Plaisirs  was 
got  ready,  the  parts  were  learnt,  the  actors  of  the  Comedie 
Fran9aise  were  come,  the  courtiers  and  their  wives  had 
their  tickets  in  hand,  the  carriages  were  at  the  door,  the 
theatre  half  full,  when  a  messenger  came  from  the  King 
bearing  a  lettre  de  cachet,  a  peremptory,  secret  and  imme- 
diate order:  the  "Mariage  de  Figaro"  was  not  to  be  played. 

All  who  have  seen  a  jostle    of   the  wealthy  suddenly 


FIGARO  199 

deprived  of  some  pleasure  —  especially  of  a  satire  upon 
themselves  —  may  imagine  the  anger  that  arose.  Mean- 
while the  King,  who  had  bethought  him  so  late  of  this 
vigorous  act,  murmured  thoughtfully  in  his  room  that 
probably  in  the  long  run  Beaumarchais  would  have  the 
best  of  it. 

He  had.  By  September  M.  de  Vandreuil  had  the  play 
ready  for  "the  ladies"  and  young  Artois  — he  had  put  up 
a  private  stage.  The  smart  and  the  literary  were  assured 
there  would  be  no  disappointment  —  nor  was  there.  Beau- 
marchais had  been  recalled  by  a  special  secret  messenger 
from  England,  whither  he  had  retired  in  a  pretended 
pique;  secret  permission  was  given,  the  "Mariage"  was 
secretly  played  (before  two  hundred  people),  and  the  thing 
was  done.  Play-acting  and  a  sort  of  passionate  frivolity 
had  conquered  the  State.  I  must  ask  pardon  for  wasting 
so  many  lines  upon  so  light  a  matter.  A  I 

Two  greater  things  were  at  hand :  Calonne  was  about  lA\| 
be  put  at  the  hefl^  of  the  firm  noes:  Joseph  JT.  was  begirt  I 
ning  to  be  decisive  about  the  SrheldL 

The  business  of  the  Scheldt  had  dragged  all  through  1783. 
The  active  hostility  of  France  and  England  had  ceased  a 
year  before  —  to  the  grave  disadvantage  of  England. 
Peace  had  been  actually  signed  for  nine  months,  yet  noth- 
ing had  been  done,  and  the  Cabinet  of  Versailles  still  tem- 
porised. To  Joseph  this  recalcitrance  upon  the  part  of  his 
ally  was  not  only  irritating,  as  had  been  years  ago  the  French 
hesitation  to  support  him  in  the  Bavarian  chance  of  war, 
it  was  incomprehensible;  he  could  lay  it  to  nothing  but 
folly.  To  what  depths  of  folly  Versailles  might  descend 
he  would  admit  even  his  clear  brain  incapable  of  judging. 
The  French  lay,  as  he  conceived,  open  to  every  attack. 


200  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Theirs  was  a  power  visibly  in  decay  which  had  made 
indeed  a  chance  lucky  move  beyond  the  Atlantic,  but 
which  could  not  long  continue  great.  It  was  surely  their 
duty,  as  it  was  obviously  their  policy,  to  be  guided  by 
Vienna.  It  was  not  till  now  —  after  so  many  years!- 
that  he  had  come  across  the  sharp  French  "jib"  which  has 
since  his  time  disconcerted  so  many  diplomatists. 

For  the  statesmen  of  that  people,  under  every  regime, 
at  least,  every  modern  regime  (wherein  I  count  the  lajter 
ministers  of  Louis  XV.  and  the  anti-clericals  of  the  present 
Republic)  —  have  much  in  them,  whatever  their  rank,  of 
their  own  peasantry.  It  is  as  though  the  Frenchman,  wThen 
he  acts  as  a  Minister  for  the  collectivity  of  France,  were 
collectively  inspired  and  thought  like  the  mass  of  plough- 
men that  build  up  his  nation.  As  the  peasants  perpetually 
bewail  the  weather,  so  he  the  times.  As  the  peasants  curse 
authority  (which  they  are  so  zealous  to  maintain  as  a 
guarantee  of  property),  so  the  statesman  the  regime  of  his 
epoch.  As  they  will  speculate  rashly  once  in  a  gener- 
ation, so  he  in  the  Seven  Years'  War  or  in  1870.  As  they  for 
years  after  such  an  error  build  up  a  fortune  in  the  stodg- 
iest securities,  so  he  will  build  up  alliances  and  an  army 
in  the  long  periods  of  national  repose.  As  they  with  pro- 
testations of  ruin  and  yet  with  courtesy  will  relinquish 
as  make-weight  to  a  bargain  some  article  wholly  worth- 
less to  them,  so  he  will  reluctantly  throw  into  the  diplomatic 
scale  some  barren  or  untenable  possession  overseas.  As 
they  in  a  bargain  ask  with  the  most  natural  air  a  most 
fantastic  price,  so  he  in  a  diplomatic  proposition.  But, 
above  all,  as  the  French  Peasantry,  when  their  apparent 
stupidity  tempts  the  city  man  to  ask  for  something  that 
really  concerns  them,  become  first  dumb,  then  nasty,  so  the 


FIGARO  201 

French  Statesman,  quite  unexpectedly  and  in  one  day, 
clouds  over  and  reveals  an  astonishing  obstinacy  to  yield 
any  point  of  material  value  to  his  nation. 

The  opening  of  the  Scheldt  was  of  no  advantage  to 
France.  The  existence  of  a  strong  Austrian  State  to  the 
north  of  her  was  a  thing  to  avoid;  the  diplomatic  tradition 
of  a  hundred  years  was  in  support  of  Holland,  and,  though 
the  Austrian  Alliance  had  changed  much,  it  had  been  made 
to  exercise  pressure  towards  the  Elbe,  not  towards  the 
North  Sea.  Hence  for  all  the  courtesy,  the  postponements, 
the  protestations  of  a  continued  warmth  in  the  alliance  and 
the  rest  of  it,  France  steadily  refused  to  move.  The 
Emperor  Joseph  did  something  he  had  been  slow  to  do  of 
recent  years:  he  wrote  directly  to  his  sister. 

•  ••••••• 

Far  off  in  the  Vosges  Madame  deLa  Motte,the  little,  proud, 
active  woman  with  the  furtive  eyes,  was  closeted  with  the 
Cardinal  de  Rohan  in  his  chateau  of  Saverne.  She  had, 
she  told  him,  all  but  recovered  her  true  place  as  a  Valois, 
she  needed  aid  for  a  very  little  time  longer.  Here  was  a 
bill  upon  a  Jew,  down  on  the  plain  in  Nancy;  quite  a 
small  bill  —  not  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  The  Car- 
dinal backed  her  bill.  j 

Marie  Antoinette  could  not  for  the  life  of  her  have  shown 
you  the  Scheldt  on  the  map;  she  knew  her  own  incom- 
petence, the  advice  she  proffered  was  null  or  uncertain, 
and,  in  any  case,  whatever  slight  suggestion  she  may  have 
made,  was  quite  passed  by  in  the  counsels  of  her  husband. 
From  that  moment  Joseph  was  turned,  if  somewhat  slowly, 
towards  action.  He  would  clear  the  Scheldt  by  force,  and 


202  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

compel  the  Cabinet  of  Versailles  to  follow;  he  took  his 
time  and  made  his  plan  — but  he  did  not  succeed. 

The  advent  of  Calonne  was  not  the  least  of  the  acci* 
dents  that  impeded  him,  and  Calonne's  appointment  with 
its  large  consequences  was  partly  — as  were  now  so  many 
things  —  the  workof  the  Queen.  A  man  of  fifty,  pro- 
vincial, a  gentleman,  a  good  lawyer;  Calonne  was  a  friend 
of  the  Polignacs;  and  Marie  Antoinette,  on  that  account 
alone,  supported  his  candidature  to  the  Direction  of  Finance: 
when  she  knew  him  she  grew  to  dislike  him.  He  was 
intensely  national,  vigorous,  gay,  a  trifle  too  rapid  in 
thought,  ambitious,  virile  with  a  Latin  virility;  he  was  of 
a  type  she  could  never  affect,  and  it  is  certain  that  he  de- 
spised her  intellect  and  resented  her  interference  with  affairs 
—  he  probably  showed  it. 

But  once  he  was  appointed  to  the  Treasury  her  dis- 
taste came  too  late.  That  department,  as  the  entangle- 
ment of  the  public  fortune  increased  in  complexity,  grew 
to  absorb  in  importance  every  other.  The  complete 
autonomy  of  each  minister  within  his  department  (which 
was  a  necessary  consequence  of  Autocracy  and  the  mark 
of  government  at  Versailles)  left  him  independent  of  his 
colleagues.  The  vast  consequence  of  any  Exchequer  Act  at 
that  moment  and  thenceforward  made  the  Exchequer 
supreme  over  War,  over  Home,  and  even  over  Foreign  affairs. 

It  is  difficult  to  describe  the  man:  his  acts  must  de- 
scribe him.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  he  was  not  corrupt, 
that  he  carried  through  his  attempt  with  courage,  that>he 
spent  the  public  money  largely  and  gaily  to  forward  his 
plan  of  procuring  a  large  increase  of  revenue  rather  than 
a  large  reduction  of  expenditure;  that  he  was  saddled  with 
the  remains  of  the  American  War  debt;  was  heir  in  office 


FIGARO  203 

to  dishonest  and  incompetent  Necker,  and  that,  so  far  as 
mere  administration  could,  it  was  he  in  particular  who 
later  opened  the  Revolution  by  one  act  of  courage,  and 
not  without  del;beration,  when  he  clearly  saw  that  an  active 
nation  needed  action  to  live:  for  it  was  he  who  summoned 
the  Notables  and  so  convened  the  first  of  the  Assemblies. 

A 

The  winter  of  '83-'84  was  very  hard.  The  new  taxes  — 
imposed  in  the  desperate  attempt  to  fill  the  Treasury  during 
the  preceding  year,  before  Calonne  came,  were  just  begin- 
ning to  tell.  The  new  loans  —  which  were  Calonne's  own  — 
hung  over  the  prosperity  of  the  State.  .  .  .  The 
Queen  was  at  ease ;  the  letters  of  Rohan  no  longer  came  for 
her  to  burn;  he  no  longer  crept  by  tricks  into  her  presence. 
.  .  .  Then  there  was  "Figaro."  "Figaro"  was  being 
talked  of  more  than  ever.  .  .  .  The  King  must  give  his 
consent  .  .  .  he  had  given  it  to  a  private  stage.  .  .  . 
Come,  would  he  not  give  it  for  the  public  ?  The  play  lay 
there,  in  the  minds  of  the  leisured  and  the  wealthy;  it 
was  potentially  a  destroyer  of  the  State,  on  which  they 
battened;  but  boredom  is  stronger  than  appetite  with  the 
smart,  and  the  smart  urged  "Figaro"  on  towards  its  full 
and  final  publicity. 

The  winter  drew  on  towards  spring.  It  still  froze  hard. 
Calonne  continued  loans  and  largesse.  "To  be  free  of 
tangle  you  must  borrow;  to  borrow  you  must  be  at  ease; 
to  be  at  ease,  you  must  spend."  He  spent  largely  upon 
the  poor  of  Paris;  he  consented  to  fetes;  he  took  the  thing 
at  a  charge.  As  a  nation  in  the  grasp  of  a  dreadful  foe 
might  win  through  by  loan  upon  loan  and  pouring  out  fresh 
millions,  bribing  colonial  soldiers  recklessly  —  five,  six, 


204  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

seven,  ten  shillings  a  day,  and  to  hell  with  the  commis- 
sariat —  so  he  in  the  grasp  of  an  embarrassed  fiscal  system 
that  was  dying  in  an  agony  and  that  nothing  could  recover. 
Such  procedure  invited  force  of  itself;  it  paved  the  way  for 
a  vast  physical,  armed  change  to  effect  renewal.  With  the 
old  regime  no  man  could  have  done  anything,  not  the  gay- 
est or  the  most  daring;  and  what  regime  has  ever  changed 
itself  ?  J^olonne  was  killingthe  old  regime. 

He  even  attempted  to  f  eedthe  people  of  Paris  by  free  gifts. 
But  still  the  people  of  Paris  were  not  contented,  and  above 
them,  in  the  ranks  that  make  "Opinion,"  there  was  an  in- 
creasing demand,  an  insistence  for  the  "  Mariage  de  Figaro." 
It  was  already  March,  and  the  play  was  still  disallowed. 

L.. 

In  his  bishop's  palace  that  March,  the  woman  La  Motte 
was  telling  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan  one  of  those  truly  consid- 
erable lies  upon  which  history  turns;  a  lie  comparable  to 
the  lie  of  Bismarck  at  Ems  —  or  to  any  other  that  any  of 
my  readers  may  cherish.  The  Cardinal  sat  listening,  his 
florid,  proud,  prominent,  unintelligent  face  all  ears.  "She 
had  reached  the  result  of  so  much  patient  waiting.  Her 
dignity  of  Valois  (and  she  was  a  Valois)  was  to  be  recog- 
nised; her  lands  (she  had  no  lands)  were  to  be  restored  to  her. 
It  was  the  QUEEN  whom  she  had  conquered:  the  QUEEN 
was  now  her  friend,  her  intimate  friend.  The  QUEEN  would 
do  anything  in  the  world  for  her.  Through  her  was  Rohan's 
avenue  to  ^fegjQtJEEN.  Her  poverty  was  at  an  end.  She 
could  soon  repay  so  many  years  of  his  kindness.'9 

•  ••••••• 

Marie  Antoinette  was  concerned  with  little  in  those 
weeks;  it  is  just  possible  she  again  spoke  a  word  for  that 


FIGARO  205 

eternal "  Figaro."  If  she  did  she  was  but  one  of  a  hundred  — 
and  the  King  gave  way.  The  censorship  should  be  removed, 
but  on  condition  that  certain  passages  most  offensive  to  the 
established  order  of  the  State  should  be  deleted.  On  that 
point  Louis  would  not  budge  ...  it  made  all  the 
difference.  They  were  deleted,  and  the  King  —  mis- 
judging now  —  said  (not  without  foreboding):  "I  hope 
it  will  be  a  frost."  On  the  first  night  the  Public 
answered  him. 

A  vast  crowd  broke  for  hours  against  the  railings  of  the 
Comedie  Fran£aise,  a  crowd  in  which  every  kind  of  man 
was  crushed  against  every  kind.  The  doors  opened  to  a 
mob  that  stormed  the  theatre  like  a  citadel,  and  that,  when 
it  entered,  could  see,  in  reserved  places,  and  entered  in  earlier 
than  the  public,  every  head  in  Paris  that  counted.  Even 
Monsieur,  deep  in  his  private  box,  was  there,  and  there 
behind  their  bars  were  the  Parliament,  the  Ministry  —  even, 
discreetly,  the  Church. 

The  play  began.  .  .  .  To-day,  in  a  society  which  it  has 
helped  to  create,  its  jests  seem  obvious,  its  epigrams  plati- 
tudes. To  that  eager  people,  starved  of  reform  in  the 
midst  of  a  huge  transformation  of  society,  they  were  bril- 
liant exactitudes  of  wit,  struck  off  like  bright  coins  — 
precisely  the  thing  desired.  This  man  found  satisfied  as 
the  play  proceeded  his  revenge  against  bought  law,  that 
man  his  brooding  against  an  old  insult  of  privilege,  that 
other  his  disgust  at  an  apparent  national  decline,  yet 
another  his  mere  hunger:  and  all  these  Frenchmen  found  in 
the  play  an  echo  of  their  national  contempt  for  a  government 
that  cannot  excuse  itself,  even  by  logic;  all  found  and  each 
found  his  necessity  for  passion  against  existing  things 
assuaged  by  the  sparkle  and  the  venom  of  the  play.  They 


206  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

roared  at  it  with  delight  as  men  do  at  the  close  of  suc- 
cessful assault.  They  laughed  as  do  men  satisfied  to  reple- 
tion. They  felt  a  common  enemy  gone  under.  There  was 
not  one  so  privileged  but  had  heartily  supped  of  ridicule 
against  some  aspect  of  the  society  he  had  learnt  to  despise. 
The  curtain  fell  to  a  storm  of  triumphant  noise.  The 
Parisians  went  out  into  the  darkness  full  and  fed  with 
the  idea  of  change,  and  a  great  crack  had  opened  in  the 
walls  of  the  palace.  It  was  the  27th  of  April,  1784. 


IX 
THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE 

FROM  APRIL  27,  1784,  TO  AUGUST  15,  1785 

S  the  summer  of  1784  broadened  through  May  and 
June,  it  led  on  the  Queen  to  every  grace  of  life, 
and  at  last,  as  it  might  have  been  imagined, 
security.  The  season  itself  was  fruitful  and  serene: 
the  establishment  of  prestige  abroad  —  so  often  a  forerun-  \ 
ner  of  evil  to  European  nations  —  was  now  triumphantly 
achieved.  There  was  now  about  the  Court  an  air  of  solidity 
and  permanence,  which  the  visits  of  foreign  princes  continued 
to  confirm,  and  this  air  (thanks  to  Calonne's  largesse) 
seemed  less  poisoned  by  that  financial  ill-ease  which  had 
turned  even  the  last  victories  of  the  American  War  into 
doubtful  and  anxious  things. 

Marie  Antoinette  had  entered  into  that  content  and  calm    h 
which  often  introduces  middle  age  after  a  youth  tormented 
by  an  inward  insecurity.     Her  inheritance  was  sure.     Her 
children  had  not  yet  betrayed  the  doom  of  their  blood. 
The  legend  of  her  follies  meant  daily  a  little  less,  because    1 
daily  it  became  more  and  more  of  a  legend  worn  by  time,      \ 
dangerous  only  if  its  set  formula  should  be  filled  with  life 
and  reality  by  some  new  scandal.  The  violence  of  her  youth 
now  seemed  exorcised;  her  fulness  of  feature,  which  had 
shocked  the  taste  of  Louis  XV. 's  Court,  accorded  with  these 
her  later  functions  of  authority.  She  was  indeed  in  that  full 
flower  of  womanhood  which  later  so  perturbed  the  memories 

207 


208  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  Burke  and  lent  one  famous  passage  of  sincerity  to  his 
false  political  rhetoric. 

As  Marie  Antoinette  so  entered  at  last  into  maturity,  and, 
it  would  seem,  into  peace,  the  comedy  which  was  to  bring 
upon  her  every  humiliation  entered  upon  the  Stage  of  this 
World.  In  the  waters  below  her,  Jeanne  de  La  Motte  de 
Valois,  fishing  for  goldfish,  struck  and  landed  her  Cardinal. 

Gustavus  of  Sweden,  Northerner  and  Flibbertigibert, 
the  same  that  had  slung  diamond  necklaces  round  the  Du 
Barry's  little  dog  and  the  same  that  had  despised  the 
Dauphine,  was  at  Court  in  the  early  days  of  that  June, 
and  saw  the  Queen  now  a  woman;  his  affections  were 
immediately  moved.  There  was  a  touch  of  flirtation 
between  them;  on  her  side  also  a  real  friendship  which 
for  years  continued  in  correspondence  —  for  the  softness 
of  the  North  never  failed  to  soothe  and  to  relieve  this 
Austrian  woman  caught  in  the  hardness  of  French  rules 
and  the  pressure  of  French  vitality.  He  had  come  as  the 
"Comte  de  Haga,"  and  she  feasted  him  well.  That  new 
toy,  a  balloon,  was  sent  up  to  amuse  him  —  she  had  it  called 
by  her  name  —  and  he  was  shown  all  that  Trianon  could 
show  by  day  or  by  night.  She  was  the  more  gracious  from 
the  awkwardness  of  Louis,  who  came  ill-dressed  to  meet 
Gustavus  and  who  was  slow  with  him.  She  gave  him 
deference.  She  consented,  at  one  great  supper  of  hers, 
to  stand  wTith  her  women  and  supervise  all,  while  he  was 
seated.  Only  she  would  not  dance  with  him;  she  said  she 
danced  no  more.  .  .  . 

Meanwhile,  accompanying  the  King  of  Sweden  and  ever 
at  his  side,  Fersen  was  come  again  to  Versailles. 

He  was  now  a  man.  War  had  made  him.  Marie 
Antoinette  could  silently  watch  in  him  a  very  different  car- 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 
By  Madame  Vigee  Le  Brun 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  209 

riage  and  a  new  alertness  of  the  visage,  but  his  eyes  still  bore 
the  tender  respect  that  she  had  known  and  remembered. 

He  was  now  for  some  years  to  come  and  go  between 
Versailles  and  the  world.  He  was  a  Colonel  of  French 
Horse,  and  his  place  was  made.  .  .  . 

The  King  of  Sweden  went  down  well;  the  Court  was  full 
of  him.  The  Queen  surpassed  herself  in  well-receiving  him. 

The  month  of  June  was  filled  with  this  sincere  and  pleas- 
ing gaiety;  but  all  that  June,  far  off,  the  La  Motte  was 
going  and  coming  in  her  secret  ways,  talking  to  the  Cardinal 
of  letters  to  her  "from  the  Queen,"  assuring  him  that  these 
letters  gave  proof  of  his  growing  favour.  She  did  more  and 
boldly ;  she  affected  to  show  him  those  royal  letters ! 

There  was  a  soldier  of  sorts,  cynical,  ramshackle,  hard 
up,  like  all  her  gang,  Retaux  de  Villette  by  name;  he  it 
was  who  wrote  these  letters  whenever  the  La  Motte  might 
ask  him — so  much  a  time.  They  must  have  amused  him  as 
he  wrote  them !  He  was  at  no  pains  to  disguise  his  hand ; 
he  wrote  straight  out  to  his  "dear  heart,"  the  Comtesse 
de  La  Motte  Valois,  anything  she  asked  him  to  write  — 
especially  praise  of  Rohan  —  and  when  he  had  written  it 
(at  so  much  a  time)  he  would  boldy  sign  "  Marie  Antoinette" 
with  a  flourish;  and  the  La  Motte  would  show  the  letter 
to  Rohan,  and  Rohan  (that  is  the  amazing  and  simple 
truth)  would  believe  them  to  be  the  Queen's! 

If  the  Cardinal  had  any  doubts  at  all  they  were  easily 
dispersed.  Cagliostro,  who  enjoyed  the  Illumination  of  the 
Seventh  House,  and  had  powers  from  the  other  world,  most 
strongly  reassured  him  —  for  a  fee ;  the  seen  and  unseen 
powers  all  combined  to  reassure  the  fatuous  Rohan,  and  he 
was  ready,  as  June  ended,  to  believe  not  only  that  he  was 
in  favour  with  the  Queen,  but  in  very  peculiar  favour 


ir 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

deed,  and  that  all  this  show  of  avoidance  and  silence  upon 

r  part  was  a  mask  necessary  to  conceal  a  deeply-rooted 
j/enderness.  She  might  turn  her  head  away  when  the 
Grand  Almoner  passed  on  his  rare  and  pompous  occa- 
sions of  ecclesiastical  office  in  the  galleries  of  Versailles. 
She  might  refuse  to  speak  to  him  a  single  word.  She 
might,  whenever  she  deigned  to  speak  of  him  to  others, 
speak  with  complete  contempt  and  disgust.  She  might 
(as  she  had  and  did)  successfully  prevent  the  smallest 
honour  or  moneys  coming  to  him.  But,  oh!  he  saw  it  all! 
It  was  but  a  mask  to  hide  her  great  love  —  and,  sooner  or 
later,  he  would  have  his  reward  for  such  long  and  patient 
waiting ! 

He  in  his  turn  wrote — constantly.  To  the  letters  the  La 
Motte  showed  him  —  dainty  scented  notes  on  little  dainty 
sheets  of  gilded  blue  (but  written,  alas!  by  such  rough 
hands)  —  he  would  answer,  with  imploring,  respect- 
ful, adoring  lines,  handed  to  the  La  Motte  that  she- 
might  give  them  to  her  great  and  high  friend.  Now  he 
could  understand  why  Cagliostro  had  promised  him  in 
oracular  enigmas  that  "glory  would  come  to  him  from 
a  correspondence,"  and  that  "full  power  with  the  Govern- 
ment" was  immediately  awaiting  him.  He  was  ready  to 
assume  it. 

July  was  empty  enough  for  the  Queen.  Her  guest  was 
gone;  there  was  little  doing  at  Versailles.  Her  amuse- 
ments, especially  her  theatre,  she  had  deliberately  given  up, 
determined  to  let  the  legend  against  her  die.  She  waited 
through  the  dull  month  a  little  worried.  Her  brother 
the  Emperor  was  still  fussing  about  his  diplomatic  quarrel, 
the  opening  of  the  Scheldt,  and  the  rest  of  it;  she  was 
anxious  for  him  and  for  peace.  Henry  of  Prussia  would 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  211 

soon  be  visiting  Versailles,  there  intriguing  (as  she  dreaded) 
against  her  Austrian  House.  But,  on  the  whole,  the 
month  of  July,  1784,  was  a  dull  month  for  her.  It  was 
not  dull  for  the  La  Motte. 

The  male  La  Motte  in  early  July  sauntered,  on  those 
fine,  sunny  days,  in  the  Palais  Royal.  He  was  looking  for 
something;  he  was  looking  for  a  face  and  a  figure  not  too 
unlike  those  of  the  Queen  of  France.  It  was  not  a  difficult 
thing  to  find ;  the  type  was  common  enough,  and  in  the  first 
days  of  his  search  he  found  it.  The  woman  was  a  woman 
of  the  town,  young,  with  a  swelled  heart,  as  it  were,  and  no 
brains;  she  was  timid,  she  was  ready  to  swallow  anything 
offered  her.  He  followed  her  with  gallantry,  and  found 
that  her  professional  name  was  D'Oliva;  her  true  name 
the  more  humble  one  of  Le  Quay.  For  a  week  or  so  this 
new  lover  of  hers  went  on  like  any  other,  he  appeared  and 
reappeared  most  naturally;  but  when  the  week  was  over 
and  he  had  grown  most  familiar  to  her  —  and  perhaps 
with  his  birth  and  high  accent  most  revered  —  La  Motte 
confided  to  her  great  and  flattering  news.  There  was  a 
great  Lady  at  Court  who  sought  her  aid  in  a  matter  of  vast 
importance,  and  that  great  Lady  spoke  perhaps  for  a  Lady 
greater  still.  The  grandeur  of  the  position  was  left  to 
brew,  and  on  the  22d  of  July,  when  it  was  already 
dusk,  the  great  Lady  (who  was  the  female  La  Motte) 
swept  into  the  poor  girl's  humble  lodgings  — a  vision  of  the 
Court  and  the  high  world;  she  told  the  wide-eyed  hussy 
things  that  seemed  too  lofty  for  human  ears.  The  Queen 
had  need  of  her. 

For  herself  (said  the  La  Motte)  she  was  the  Queen's 
one  great,  near  friend  (she  showed  a  letter  —  one  of  the 
famous  letters),,  and  if  the  D'Oliva  would  do  as  she  was 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

begged  to  do,  the  gratitude  of  the  Queen  would  far  excel 
in  effect  the  paltry  400  pounds  that  she,  La  Motte,  would 
give.  Come,  would  she  help  the  Queen  ? 

Oh,  yes!  the  D'Oliva  would  help  the  Queen!  She  would 
come  next  day  to  Versailles ! 

Why,  then,  all  was  well.  .  .  .  And  that  very  night, 
post-haste,  the  interview  over,  Madame  de  La  Motte 
galloped  off  to  Versailles  to  take  a  room  with  her  maid. 

For  the  Queen  the  dreary  month  was  ending  —  there 
was  no  trouble  upon  her  horizon.  She  had  written  again 
to  Sweden;  she  asked  for,  and  obtained,  the  reversion 
of  the  See  of  Albi  for  a  friend  of  the  King  of  Sweden's. 
There  was  no  other  news. 

History  does  not  show  perhaps  one  situation  more 
wonderfully  unlike  the  common  half-happenings,  com- 
plexities and  reactions  of  real  life,  nor  one  more  won- 
derfully fulfilling  the  violent  and  exact,  simple,  and  pre- 
arranged ironies  of  drama,  than  the  contrast  of  that  night: 
the  Queen  in  the  palace,  ignorant  of  any  ill  save  the  old 
and  dwindling  tales  against  her,  listless  after  a  summer 
month  of  idleness  and  of  restraint  —  and  coming  right  up 
at  her,  down  the  Paris  road,  the  woman  who  was  to  des- 
tsoy^her  altogether. 

The  La  Motte  and  her  maid  got  into  Versailles  very  late. 
They  took  rooms  at  the  Belle  Image.  Next  day  La  Motte 
and  Retaux,the  soldier,  came, bringing  the  poor  girl  D'Oliva, 
with  them;  and  after  a  short  walk  in  the  town,  during 
which  she  was  left  in  the  hotel  with  that  "great  Lady," 
before  whom  she  trembled,  they  told  D'Oliva  that  they 
had  seen  the  Queen  and  that  all  was  well.  They  waited 
till  the  morrow.  On  the  evening  of  that  morrow,  the 
24th  of  July,  Madame  de  La  Motte  warned  the  D'Oliva 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  213 

that  the  time  was  come.  She  dressed  her  all  in  white, 
magnificently;  she  gave  her  a  letter  and  a  rose,  and  said: 
"To-night  we  go  into  the  Park  together,  and  there  you 
will  see  for  a  moment  a  great  Lord.  Give  him  this 
letter  and  that  rose,  and  say  these  words:  'You  know 
my  meaning!'  You  will  have  no  more  to  do."  It  was 
about  eleven,  a  dark  night  and  no  moon,  when  the  two 
women  went  together  into  the  vast  gardens  of  the  palace. 

As  you  stand  in  the  centre  of  the  great  fa9ade  of  Ver- 
sailles, and  look  westward  down  a  mile  of  formal  lawn  and 
water,  there  lie  to  your  left  in  the  palace  what  were  the 
Queen's  rooms,  and  to  your  left  in  the  gardens  a  large 
grove  called  "the  Queen's  Grove,"  in  which  are  the  trees 
that  can  be  seen  nearest  to  her  windows  or  to  be  reached 
most  quickly  from  what  were  her  private  doors. 

Near  and  within  this  grove,  by  an  appointment  which 
the  La  Motte  had  sworn  him  to  observe,  paced  and  repaced 
the  Cardinal.  The  La  Motte  had  told  him  he  would  see 
the  Queen. 

In  an  enormous  cloak  of  dark  mysterious  blue  that 
covered  his  purple  to  the  heels,  in  a  broad  soft  hat  that 
flapped  down  and  hid  his  face,  this  fool  of  magnitude  paced 
the  gardens  of  Versailles  and  waited  for  the  delicious  hour. 
Behind  him  as  he  paced  followed  respectfully  a  man  of  his — 
one  Planta,  a  sort  of  insignificant  noble.  The  hour  came. 
The  La  Motte  found  the  Cardinal.  She  led  him  along  a 
path  among  the  high  trees  —  and  there  for  a  moment  near 
a  hornbeam  hedge  that  grew  there,  he  saw  dimly  a  woman 
in  white,  showing  tall  and  vague  in  the  darkness.  This 
figure  held  forward  to  him  in  some  confusion  a  rose,  and 
said  very  low,  "You  know  my  meaning!"  Rohan  seized 
the  hem  of  the  white  dress  and  kissed  it  passionately  but 


214  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

before  another  word  could  pass  a  man  came  forward  at 
speed  and  whispered  as  in  an  agony:  " Madame!  D'Artois 
is  near  — Madame!"  The  La  Motte  said  " Quick !  .  .  ." 
The  thing  in  white  slipped  back  into  the  shadow  of  a 
bush,  the  Cardinal  was  hurried  away  —  but  his  life  had 
reached  its  summit!  He  had  heard  dear  words  from  the 
lips  of  the  Queen!  .  .  . 

Marie  Antoinette  was  asleep  perhaps,  or  perhaps  chat- 
ting, muffled,  with  Polignac's  wife,  or  perhaps,  more  likely,  by 
her  children's  nursery  beds,  watching  their  repose  and  ques- 
tioning their  nurse  in  the  wing  of  the  great  palace  hard  by. 
A  hundred  yards  away,  in  the  darkness  of  the  grove  out- 
fiside,    that   scene  had   passed  which   set   the  train  of  her 
H   destiny  alight;  and  the  explosion  caused  by  it  ruined  all 
/    that  creviced  society  of  Versailles  and  cast  it  down,  casting 
[     down  with  it  the  Queen. 

There  existed  at  that  time  a  necklace.  Fantastic  stories 
have  been  told  of  its  value;  of  those  sovereigns  to  whom  it 
was  offered,  and  who,  with  a  sigh,  had  been  compelled 
to  refuse  it.  It  may  very  likely  have  been  offered  to  Marie 
Antoinette  (with  her  old  passion  for  jewels)  some  years 
before,  in  '79,  after  the  birth  of  her  first  child.  It  may  be 
that  the^  King  would  have  given  her  the  expensive 
thing — ,£64,000  was  the  price  of  it  —  it  may  be  he  had 
never  seen  it.  At  any  rate,  all  the  world  knew  that 
the  unrivalled  necklace  existed,  and  had  for  some  years 
existed  as  the  property  of  two  Court  jewellers  who  worked 
in  partnership,  Boehmer  and  Bassange,  and  that  they 
could  not  find  a  purchaser.  The  reader  should  remember 
this  necklace,  for  though  it  will  not  be  before  him  till  six 
months  after  this  July  of  '84,  yet,  but  for  the  scene  in  the 
"Queen's  Grove,"  Rohan  would  never  have  handled  it, 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  215 

and  had  Rohan  never  handled  it,  there  would  not  have 
arisen  that  enormous  scandal  that  came  so  opportune  to 
new  rumours  and  new  angers,  and  in  the  end  dragged  down 
the  Queen.  &ft/  \lm, 

/$  -$ 

With  August  came  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia  and  all  the 
bother  of  him.  The  Emperor  was  gressiog  the  Dutch 
more  and  more.  France  was  half  inclined  to  prevent  that 
pressure,  in  spite  of  the  Austrian  Alliance.  France  was 
determined,  at  any  rate,  to  prevent  Austria,  allied  or  not, 
from  strengthening  herself  upon  the  North  and  East. 
England,  to  keep  the  Scheldt  shut,  was  more  than  half 
inclined  to  prevent  that  pressure,  in  spite  of  Holland's 
attitude  during  the  American  War.  Prussia  stood  by  to 
gain  —  and  part  of  Prussia's  chance  was  the  opportunity 
of  feeling  and  influencing  Louis  XVI. 's  Cabinet. 

prince  Henry  came,  as  Frederick's  brother,  to  feel  and  to 
influence;  to  see  how  much  could  be  done  by  way  of_separ- 
atingVjenna  from  Versailles.  It  was  a  strain  on  the  Queen. 
What  could  she  know  of  these  intrigues  and  counter- 
intrigues?  She  saw  things,  now  as  ever,  few  and  plain; 
she  saw  a  Prussian  separate  her  House  and  the  House  into 
which  she  had  married.  Therefore  Prince  Henry's  visit 
was  a  difficulty  to  her.  She  solved  it  as  one  might  expect 
of  her  character,  by  avoiding  him.  She  wrote  to  the  King 
of  Sweden  a  little  too  familiarly,  and  assured  him  that  she 
had  hardly  seen  the  visitor:  she  "was  at  Trianon  continually, 
with  intimates  only."  Paris  thought  much  of  him  (for 
Prussia  was  then,  as  now,  efficient) ;  she  was  very  properly 
fatigued,  but,  improperly,  she  did  not  conquer  her  fatigue. 
During  all  his  stay  he  saw  her  perhaps  not  half  a  dozen 


216  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

times,  though  he  (as  might  be  expected  of  his  character  or 
of  any  of  his  descendants,  ancestors,  or  collaterals)  stayed 
on  and  on  and  on.  ...  He  stayed  steadily  on  in  France 
till  November! — and  before  November  enough  had 
happened ! 

The  little  Dauphin  was  really  ill.  His  mother  was 
anxious.  St.  Cloud  was  bought  for  him,  in  some  vague 
hope  that  the  "air"  was  better  there — as  though  the  "air" 
of  one  suburb  more  than  another  could  cure  the  rickets  of 
the  Bourbons. 

Next,  it  was  known  that  the  Queen  was  again  with  child. 
She  wrote  of  it  (familiarly  enough)  to  the  King  of  Sweden. 

More  than  this,  war  was  apparent.  The  Emperor's 
smouldering  quarrel  with  the  Dutch  had  broken  into  flame; 
upon  the  4th  of  October,  1784,  an  Imperial  ship  had  sailed 
up  the  Scheldt  to  see  if  the  Dutch  would  oppose  an  entry. 
The  Dutch  did  oppose  it ;  they  shot  at  the  Imperial  ship  and 
took  it,  and  every  ruler  in  Europe  put  his  hand  to  the  hilt 
of  his  sword. 

So  far  Marie  Antoinette  had  done  little  at  Versailles, 
but  be  worried  by  all  this  complex  quarrel;  a  fortnight 
before  the  incident  she  had  told  her  brother  that  "really 
she  was  not  so  important  at  Versailles";  she  hoped  it  was 
a  thing  to  shirk.  Now  that  the  guns  had  begun,  she  was  in 
a  panic  and  made  a  call  upon  her  old  and  natural  violence. 
She  effected  little:  Vergennes  and  the  tradition  of  French 
diplomacy  were  too  much  for  such  tantrums,  but  the 
superficial  aspect  of  her  action  was  striking.  It  was  known 
that  she  continually  saw  the  King,  that  she  made  scenes, 
that  she  stormed.  It  was  known  that  she  was  "Austrian" 
in  all  this,  if  it  was  not  understood  by  the  people  that  she 
had  failed.  On  the  contrary,  when  in  the  upshot  a  com- 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  217 

promise  was  arranged,  she  appeared  once  more  in  that 
most  odious  light  —  a  woman  sending  French  tribute  to 
Vienna. 

For  when  the  Emperor  consented  to  the  closing  of  the 
Scheldt  (it  was  not  till  February  of  the  next  year  that  he 
gave  way),  the  French  Cabinet,  which  had  firmly  supported 
Holland,  was  gradually  influenced  to  guarantee  the  indem- 
nity which  the  dignity  of  the  Imperial  Crown  demanded: 
it  was  close  on  ten  million  florins.1  The  Dutch  refused  so 
large  a  sum.  The  Queen  wrote,  cajoled,  insisted  in  favour 
of  her  brother,  her  House,  and  Austria.  The  French  Foreign 
Office,  true  to  its  tradition  of  taking  material  interests 
seriously,  stood  firm  and  backed  Holland  steadily.  At  last 
the  French  agreed  to  take  over  and  to  pay  as  sponsors  for 
Holland  one-half  the  sum  demanded  of  the  Dutch  Govern- 
ment, if  thereby  they  might  avoid  war  in  Europe.  The 
payment  wras  due  to  the  Queen's  vigour  or  interference,  and 
meanwhile  there  had  arisen  one  of  those  large  and  sud- 
den affairs  which  give  everything  around  them  a  new  mean- 
ing, which  emphasise  every  coincident  evil,  and  draw 
together  into  their  atmosphere  every  ill-will  and  every 
calumny.  Just  before  Marie  Antoinette  appeared  before 
the  populace  as  one  who  was  sending  millions  of  French 
treasure  to  her  foreign  brother,  came  the  explosion  —  in  the 
interval  of  all  this  diplomacy  and  negotiation  —  of  what  is 
called  in  history  "The  Affair  of  the  Diamond  Necklace." 
The  truth  with  regard  to  that  famous  business  is  as 
follows : — 

When  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan  left  the  Park  that  mid- 
night of  July  after  the  rapture  of  a  word  from  the  ridic- 
ulous  D'OIiva,  he  was  fallen  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the 

^  The  fiction  of  the  indemnity  is  entertaining.    The  Dutch  were  to  yield  Maestricht  as  the  equivalent  to  the 
Emperor's  granting  the  closing  of  the  Scheldt.    The  indemnity  was  to  "  redeem  "  Maestricht. 


218  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

La  Motte.  She  it  was,  as  he  thought,  who  had  don^Tthis 
great  thing  for  him.  She  had  given  him  the  Queen;  and 
he  was  now  entirely  sure  of  his  right  to  act  for  Marie 
Antoinette  and  to  serve  her.  The  La  Motte  began  by 
begging  money  of  him  for  the  Queen's  pet  charities.  She 
obtained  it:  first,  two  or  three  thousand  pounds  at  the  end 
of  August.  Retaux  wrote  the  letter:  "It  was  for  people 
whom  she  wanted  to  help."  Retaux  signed  it  with  his 
"Marie  Antoinette":  and  Rohan  paid.  A  few  pounds  of 
it  went  to  the  unhappy  woman  whom  La  Motte  had  used, 
the  rest  to  creditors  or  show.  Much  of  the  time  when  the 
Scheldt  business  was  at  its  height,  just  as  Prince  Henry  was 
leaving  and  all  were  talking  of  the  Queen,  in  the  autumn  of 
1784  a  new  letter  came  (again  from  Retaux'  hand)  asking  for 
four  thousand.  There  was  the  signature  "  Marie  Antoinette," 
there  the  beloved  terms,  and  Rohan  blindly  paid:  his  man 
took  the  money  to  the  La  Motte,  "to  give  the  Queen." 
The  Cardinal  was  sure  of  his  way  now;  he  was  a  master; 
the  Queen  was  under  obligation  to  him.  The  money  was 
spent  in  a  very  lavish  display  by  the  male  and  the  female' 
La  Motte.  They  travelled  with  grandeur;  they  visited 
in  a  patronising  manner  the  earlier  home  of  their  poverty; 
they  lived  high.  With  the  end  of  the  year  1784  more 
money  was  needed  —  and  here  enters  into  history  that 
diamond  necklace  which  had  so  long  been  waiting  its  cue 
to  come  upon  the  stage. 

The  name  of  La  Motte  was  now  current  —  in  the  mouth 
alone  and  among  the  populace,  not  at  Court — for  one 
who  could  do  much.  Bassange  heard,  from  a  friend,  of  the 
La  Mottes :  of  Madame  de  La  Motte.  He  sent  the  friend 
to  see  whether  his  white  elephant  of  a  necklace  could  be 
moved  towards  that  quarter.  Madame  de  La  Motte  said 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  219 

wisely  that  she  must  see  the  jewels,  a  day  or  two  after 
Christmas.  She  saw  them;  for  three  weeks  they  were  kept 
on  the  hook.  Upon  the  21st  of  January,  1785,  a  date 
that  has  appeared  before  and  will  appear  again  in  this 
history,  she  sent  and  told  them  that  the  Queen  would  buy, 
but  (in  her  usual  manner)  a  "great  lord"  would  be  the 
intermediary;  and  on  the  24th,  by  the  time  it  was  full 
daylight,  the  great  lord  came  in  the  winter  morning  to  do 
that  little  thing  that  led  to  so  much  at  last.  It  was  the 
Cardinal  de  Rohan  who  came,  handled  the  jewels,  bar- 
gained, promised  four  payments  (at  six-monthly  intervals)  of 
£16,000  each,  the  first  for  the  first  of  August  (the  date 
should  be  noted),  and  demanded  delivery  on  the  1st  of 
February.  The  jewellers  brought  the  gems  on  that  day  to 
his  great  palace  in  the  Marais,  and  he  then  told  them 
frankly  that  the  buyer  behind  him  was  the  Queen. 

They  saw  her  signature,  "Marie  Antoinette  de  France"; 
they  saw  a  part  at  least  of  her  letter,  to  the  effect  that  she 
the  Queen  was  not  accustomed  to  accommodation  and  there- 
fore begged  him  to  negotiate.  They  were  satisfied,  left  the 
necklace,  and  were  gone.  That  night  the  Cardinal  gave 
it  to  Madame  de  La  Motte  at  Versailles,  or  rather,  hiding 
himself  in  an  alcove,  saw  it  given  to  a  man  who  acted  the 
part  of  the  Queen's  messenger  and  who  was,  of  course, 
Retaux. 

«this,  I  say,  passed  on  the  1st  of  February,  17857^ 
tt  day,  Candlemas  —  just  two  years  after  Madame  de 
La  Motte  had  made  her  desperate  effort  to  approach  the 
Queen  with  a  petition  —  Rohan  and  the  jeweller,  one  as 
Grand  Almoner  in  the  high  religious  function  of  the  day, 
the  other  as  a  man  in  the  crowd,  each  watched  the  royal 
party  go  by  and  noted  the  Queen;  each  missed  the  jewel 


220  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

that  surely  she  should  be  wearing  on  the  morrow  of  its 
purchase,  and  each  saw  that  it  was  not  yet  worn.  Each 
for  different  reasons  wondered,  but  each  for  different  rea- 
sons was  silent,  and  each  determined,  for  different  reasons, 
to  wait.  Meanwhile  the  necklace  was  in  the  custody  of 
the  male  La  Motte  ready  for  its  journey  to  London,  the 
refuge  of  the  oppressed. 

Lent  passed.  On  Easter  Sunday  the  Queen's  third 
child  —  he  who  became  the  Dauphin  of  the  Imprisonment 
—  was  born.  If,  thought  Rohan,  the  Queen  had  purposely 
waited  before  putting  on  the  necklace,  in  order  to  avoid  a 
coincidence  of  date  between  his  visit  to  the  jewellers  and 
her  first  wearing  of  the  gem,  surely  a  long  enough  space 
would  have  passed  by  the  time  of  the  Relevailles,  the  cere- 
monial churching  in  Notre  Dame  which  followed  the  birth 
of  every  member  of  the  Blood  Royal.  The  Relevailles  ap- 
proached. It  was  more  than  eight  months  since  the  Cardinal 
had  been  given  that  rose  at  midnight,  and  he  began  to  grow 
anxious.  The  necklace  haunted  him.  .  .  .  Far  off  in 
London,  the  male  La  Motte  was  selling,  stone  by  stone, 
the  better  part  of  it;  the  rest  Retaux  was  carefully  dis- 
posing of  in  Paris  itself.  • 

It  was  on  May  24  that  the  Queen  proceeded  to  Paris 
for  the  ceremony  of  the  Relevailles.  All  the  antique  gran- 
deur was  there  and  the  crowds,  but  over  all  of  it  and  over 
the  crowds  a  new  and  dreadful  element  of  popular  silence. 
The  guns  saluted  her  through  a  silent  air.  In  the  streets 
of  the  University  the  very  wheels  of  her  carriage  could  be 
heard,  so  hushed  was  the  crowd.  The  rich  in  the  opera 
that  evening  cheered  her,  but  going  in  and  coming  out 
through  popular  thousands  she  heard  no  cheers.  She 
supped  in  the  Temple  with  Artois,  whose  appanage  the 


PORTRAIT  BUST  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  NORMANDY 

The  second  Dauphin,  sometimes  called  Louis  XVII.,  who  died  in  the  Temple. 

This  bust  was  broken  in  the  fall  of  the  palace,  and  has  recently 

been  recovered  and  restored  to  Versailles 


THE    DIAMOND   NECKLACE  221 

liberties  of  the  Temple  were,  and  she  could  see  through 
the  night  in  his  garden,  as  she  had  seen  so  often  before  in 
his  feasts  and  his  receptions,  the  dimmer  and  more  huge 
from  the  blaze  of  light  near  by,  that  ominous  great 
Tower  which,  it  is  said,  she  had  always  dreaded  and 
dreaded  more  acutely  now  with  an  access  of  superstitious 
fear.  "Oh!  Artois,  pull  it  down!"  The  Grand  Almoner 
was  present  at  this  high  function;  he  watched  her  and 
marvelled  that  the  necklace  should  still  be  hidden  away. 

The  next  morning  she  could  be  certain  how  Paris  had 
changed.  There  was  throughout  its  air  a  mixture  of  indif- 
ference and  of  dislike  that  poisoned  her  society  with  it. 
Paris  now  thought  of  her  fixedly  as  the  living  extrava- 
gance of  the  Court.  St.  Cloud  was  at  their  gates  to  reproach 
her,  with  its  title  of  the  "Queen's  Palace,"  its  printed 
"Queen's"  orders  on  the  gate.  The  Deficit  was  there  to 
reproach  her.  Her  very  economies,  the  lesser  festivities, 
the  abandoned  journeys  of  the  Court,  her  rarer  and  more 
rare  appearances  in  the  capital,  the  lack  of  noise  in  Trianon, 
were,  in  the  public  mouth,  a  consequence  of  past  excesses. 
The  judgment  was  false,  but  it  stood  firm. 

Her  undue  influence  over  the  King  and  the  councils  of 
the  King  was  another  legend,  less  false  than  that  of  gross 
extravagance.  There  was  no  proof,  but  a  crowd  has  more 
judgment  than  an  isolated  man,  and  the  crowd  divined 
what  we  now  know.  They  had  divined  it  in  this  critical 
year  which  saw  France  balancing  on  the  verge  of  war  with 
Austria,  and  which,  before  its  close,  saw  the  payment  of 
the  Dutch  indemnity  by  the  French  to  the  Queen's  brother 
at  Vienna.  All  her  action  for  twelve  months  was  wholly 
Austrian  in  their  eyes,  and  they  were  wholly  right.  It  was 
a  popular  atmosphere,  so  sullen  and  so  prepared, 


222  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

full  for  a  year  past  of  "Figaro's"  ironic  laughter  against  a 
regime  already  hurrying  to  its  end,  thai  the  explosion  of  that 
summer  was  to  come;  for  the  1st  of  August  was  near, 
and  with  it  the  time  for  the  first  instalment  upon  the 
necklace. 

In  June  the  Comte  de  La  Motte  was  back  from  London 
paying  part  of  the  money  he  had  received  for  the  diamonds 
to  a  Paris  banker  —  one  Perregaux. 

In  July  —  on  the  mid-Tuesday  of  the  month  .•« —  Boehmer, 
in  his  capacity  of  Court  Jeweller,  brought  to  Versailles 
certain  jewels.  He  brought  with  him  also  a  letter  which 
he  gave  to  the  Queen  at  midday  as  she  came  out  of  Mass; 
he  gave  her  the  letter  with  mystery  and  with  profound 
respect,  and  was  gone.  The  Queen  read  that  note;  it  was 
incomprehensible  to  her.  It  assured  her  of  her  jewellers' 
unalterable  devotion ;  it  begged  her  to  believe  that  Boehmer 
and  Bassange  were  willing  to  accept  her  "latest  proposals," 
and  it  ended  with  their  satisfaction  that  "the  finest  set  of 
diamonds  in  the  world  should  adorn  the  greatest  and  the  best 
of  its  Queens.'9  Whether  Marie  Antoinette  had  even  heard 
of  the  necklace  in  the  past  we  cannot  tell,  though  prob- 
ably, like  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  she  had.  Whether  she 
had  or  not,  the  note  was  equally  mysterious  to  her.  The 
Comptroller  of  the  Household,  the  Baron  de  Breteuil,  was 
told  of  the  little  bother;  he  sent  for  Boehmer,  asked  him 
what  on  earth  the  note  meant,  but  he  only  received  mys- 
terious replies  leading  nowhere. 

If  it  be  asked  by  the  reader  why,  seeing  a  complication 
of  some  sort  before  her,  Marie  Antoinette  did  not  at  once 

;rder  an  investigation  to  be  pursued  by  the  police,  the 
nswer  is  simple  enough  to  anyone  acquainted  with  her 
haracter:  the  annoyance  bored  her.  Her  instinct  was 


THE   DIAMOND   NECKLACE  223 

simply  to  avoid  it.  She  may  (some  say  so)  have  spared 
herself  trouble  upon  some  theory  that  the  jeweller  was 
mad:  anyhow,  she  spared  herself  the  trouble. 

If  it  be  asked  how  the  complication  ever  arose,  why  that 
enigmatical  letter  was  written,  and  why,  once  written  and 
delivered,  Bcehmer  should  have  hesitated  and  equivocated 
meaninglessly  in  his  answers  to  Breteuil,  the  answer  is 
simple  when  one  hears  what  had  just  passed  in  that  lower 
world  of  duped  Cardinal  and  intriguing,  most  impudent 
of  adventurers,  rapscallions,  and  spiritualists. 

Madame  de  La  Motte  had  been  driving  Retaux  of  late 
to  write  more  frequently  than  ever  his  "Marie  Antoinette" 
letters  to  the  Cardinal.  The  poor  soldier  was  not  a  woman, 

Ihe  was  not  even  a  writer  of  fiction,  and  he  had  been  kept 
hard  at  it  to  force  the  note  of  love  so  often  and  in  such 

(various  ways;  until  at  last,  one  letter  had  been  ordered 
of  him  saying,  as  the  date  of  the  first  instalment  approached, 
that  "really  the  price  was  too  high."  Couldn't  the  Car- 

|  dinal,  for  her  sake,  get  some  £8,000  off  the  price  ?  If  he 
could,  the  Queen  would  pay  on  the  1st  of  August,  not  the 
£16,000  then  due,  but  a  full  £28,000.  The  Cardinal  read 
and  obeyed.  The  jewellers  were  agreeable.  Hence  Bceh- 
mer's  note  of  July  12th,  and  hence  (since  he  was  con- 
vinced that  the  Queen,  by  the  very  method  of  her  pur- 
chase, desired  secrecy  above  all  things)  his  evasive  replies 
to  De  Breteuil. 

Thus,  in  that  world  beneath  of  which  she  knew  nothing, 
things  were  coming  to  an  issue  against  Marie  Antoinette: 
one  last  event  did  all.  Upon  the  Saturday  before  the  pay- 
ment was  due,  the  Cardinal  (acting  upon  a  further  letter) 
gave  Bcehmer  something  over  £1,000  and  said  to  him  that  it 
was  free  money  —  over  and  above  the  fixed  price  —  to 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

console  him  for  the  unwelcome  news  that  the  first  instal- 
ment could  not  be  met  quite  punctually.  Come,  the 
Queen  would  certainly  pay  on  the  1st  of  October ;  it  was 
but  two  months  to  wait.  He  had  seen  it  in  a  note  of 
the  Queen's  which  the  Comtesse  de  La  Motte  liad  just 
shown  him. 

It  is  probable  that  even  the  Cardinal  had  become  sus- 
picious now  —  he  says  as  much  himself  —  but  his  pride  and 
his  fear  of  exposure  held  him.  As  for  the  jeweller,  the 
interview  of  that  Saturday  broke  his  back;  he  was  dis- 
tracted. On  the  Tuesday  (or  the  Wednesday)  the  climax 
of  the  comedy  wTas  reached.  The  Comtesse  de  La  Motte 
met  the  two  partners  Bcehmer  and  Bassange  together  and 
told  them  boldly  that  the  signature  "Marie  Antoinette  de 
France"  was  a  forgery  — so  there!  In  the  stupefaction  that 
followed  she  added  the  quiet  advice  that  for  their  money 
they  must  bleed  the  Cardinal  —  "He  had  plenty"  —  and 
so  left  them. 

Then  followed  that  general  scurry  which  is  the  note  of 
embroglios  as  they  flare  up  towards  their  end.  Bassange 
runs  here,  Bcehmer  runs  there;  the  one  to  Rohan  in  his  Epis- 
copal Palace,  the  other  to  those  who  can  help  him  with  the 
Queen  —  notably  to  Madame  de  Canapan,  who  has  left  an 
exaggerated  and  distorted  account  of  the  interview.  To 
Bassange  the  Cardinal  (anything  to  gain  time  in  the  hurly- 
burly)  swears  the  signature  is  true;  to  Boehmer  Madame 
de  Campan,  with  her  solid,  upper-servant  face,  announces 
the  redundant  truth  that  he  seems  to  have  been  let  in. 
As  for  the  La  Motte,  she  flies  to  Rohan,  and  he  (any- 
thing to  keep  things  dark  and  to  protect  a  witness  to  his 
incalculable  stupidity  of  a  coxcomb)  consents  to  hide  her; 
he  gives  her  asylum  in  his  great  house. 


THE   DIAMOND   NECKLACE  225 

Next  Bcehmer  goes  to  Versailles  —  at  once  —  and  im- 
plores the  Queen  to  see  him.  The  Queen  has  really  had 
her  fill  of  this  kind  of  thing;  she  refuses.  But  next  week 
she  consents,  and  the  revelations  begin. 

It  was  at  such  a  moment,  with  such  storms  about  her,  in 
the  full  and  growing  unpopularity  of  her  Austrian  influence 
in  the  affair  of  the  Dutch  indemnity,  in  the  full  and  grow- 
ing renascence  of  the  legend  of  her  extravagance,  that 
Marie  Antoinette  had  determined  not  only  to  play  once 
more  in  her  theatre  at  Trianon  —  the  chief  reproach  of  the 
past,  a  legend  with  the  populace  for  unqueenly  exposure, 
for  lack  of  dignity,  for  expense  —  not  only  to  break  her 
[•  wise  resolve,  which  had  been  kept  for  more  than  a  year, 
,  that  her  plays  should  cease,  but  actually  to  play  another 
piece  by  that  same  Beaumarchais  whose  wit  was  the  spear- 
head of  the  attack  upon  the  old  regime.  The  decision 
came  neither  of  cynicism  nor  of  folly  upon  her  part;  it  came 
of  tragic  ignorance. 

It  was  while  she  was  rehearsing  her  part  of  "Rosine" 
that  she  was  persuaded  —  probably  by  Madame  de  Cam- 
pan  herself  —  to  send  for  Boehmer  and  to  hear  his  tale. 
He  came  upon  the  9th  of  August,  Tuesday,  by  the  Queen's 
command,  to  Trianon.  At  first  he  simply  asked  for  the 
money  he  believed  his  due.  When  he  saw  that  Marie 
Antoinette  neither  understood  why  it  should  be  paid,  nor 
for  what,  nor  by  whom,  he  told  the  whole  story  as  he  had 
heard  it.  He  was  sent  off  to  write  down  coherently  and  at 
length  in  a  clear  memorandum  the  details  of  this  amaz- 
ing thing,  and  when  he  had  gone  the  Queen  raved. 

Each  consequence  and  aspect  of  the  abomination,  as 
each  successively  appeared  to  her,  struck  her  with  separate 
and  aggravated  blows.  Her  name  linked  with  a  libertine 


226  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

whom,  of  all  libertines,  she  most  loathed  —  a  man  who  was 
the  object  of  her  dead  mother's  especial  contempt! 
The  half-truths  that  would  come  in;  her  love  of  jewellery  - 
now  long  conquered,  but  now  widely  remembered!  Her 
secret  debts  —  now  long  paid,  but  already  a  fixed  idea 
in  the  public  mind!  At  the  best  that  such  a  man  had 
thought  it  conceivable  that  she  should  be  such  a  woman; 
at  the  worst  that  the  world  might  believe  it! 

Upon  Friday  the  report  of  Boehmer  came  in.  She  mas- 
tered it  that  day  and  the  next,  and  on  Sunday  the  14th,  the 
eve  of  the  Assumption,  she  begged  her  husband  to  spend  all 
the  day  with  her  at  Trianon.  He  willingly  came.  They 
together  —  but  surely  at  her  initiative  —  determined  on  a 
gujilic-tiial.  Mercy  would  have  done  what  wre  do  now  in 
England  when  there  is  danger  of  public  scandal  and  the 
weakening  of  government;  he  would  have  paid  the  La 
Motte  woman  something  to  be  off.  Vergennes  was  strongly 
in  favour  of  silence  —  as  strongly  as  Downing  Street  would 
be  to-day  — for  he  was  of  the  trained  diplomatic  kind.  The 
King's  honour,  the  Queen's  intense  and  burning  indignation 
against  calumny  persuaded  them  to  risk  publicity. 

The  course  taken  was,  I  repeat,  not  a  course  easy  for  my 
modern  readers  to  understand;  we  take  it  for  granted  in 
the  modern  world,  and  especially  in  England,  that  a  matter 
of  this  sort,  involving,  as  it  were,  all  the  social  fabric,  is 
best  snuffed  out.  Thus  the  French  Foreign  Office  were 
willing  to  destroy  the  Pannizardi  telegram,  an<l  rather  to 
give  a  traitor  the  advantage  of  concealing  damning  evidence 
against  him  than  to  risk  a  rupture  with  Italy.  Thus  the 
English  Home  Office  allows  criminals  of  a  certain  stand- 
ing to  go  free  rather  than  endanger  social  influences  whose 
secrecy  is  thought  necessary  to  the  State;  nor  do  we  allow 


THE  DIAMOND  NECKLACE  227 

any  to  know  what  sums  or  how  large  are  paid  for  public 
honours,  nor  always  to  what  objects  secret  subscriptions  of 
questionable  origin  — in  Egypt,  for  instance  — are  devoted. 
Louis  XVI.  and  his  wife  at  this  critical  moment  decided 
otherwise  and  upon  another  theory  of  morals.  They  decided 
to  clear  by  public  trial  the  honour  of  the  Crown.  That 
decision,  more  than  any  other  act,  cost  them  their  thrones. 
It  has  preserved  the  truth  for  history. 


The  Feast  of  the  Assumption  has  for  centuries  attracted 
the  French  by  its  peculiar  sanctity.  Even  during  that 
phase  of  infidelity  which,  before  the  Revolution,  covered 
all  their  intellect  and  still  clings  to  the  bulk  of  their  lower 
middle  classes,  the  French  maintained  it.  Even  to-day, 
when  a  fierce  anti-Christian  Masonry  has  moulded  groups 
of  artisans  and  intellectuals  into  ardent  champions  against 
the  Faith,  the  Assumption  is  universally  observed.  In  the 
Court  of  Versailles,  though  now  but  a  ceremony,  it  was  the 
noblest  ceremony  of  the  year. 

It  was  warm  noon  upon  that  15th  of  August.  The 
Court  in  all  its  colours  stood  ranked  outside  the  Chapel 
Royal.  The  Grand  Almoner,  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan, 
taller  than  the  prelates  and  the  priests  around  him,  stood 
ready  in  procession  to  enter  and  to  celebrate  the  Pontifical 
High  Mass  as  soon  as  the  King  and  Queen  might  appear; 
but  the  King  and  Queen,  and  a  minister  or  two  in  atten- 
dance, were  waiting  behind  closed  doors  in  Louis'  pri- 
vate room.  The  procession  still  halted:  the  Court  was 
already  impatient:  the  doors  still  stood  closed.  They 
opened;  a  servant  came  out  and  told  the  Cardinal  that  the 
King  wished  to  see  him  a  moment,  The  servant  and  he 


228  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

went  in  together,  and  the  doors  shut  behind  the  purple  of 
Rohan's  robes  and  the  lace  upon  his  wrists  and  shoulders. 

The  Court  outside  grew  weary  of  waiting.  A  quarter 
of  an  hour,  twenty  minutes  passed;  it  was  near  the  half- 
hour  when  those  doors  opened  again  and  the  Head  of 
the  King's  Household,  the  Baron  de  Breteuil,  appeared 
with  the  Cardinal  at  his  side.  A  lieutenant  of  the  Guard 
happened  to  be  by.  Breteuil  summoned  him  and  said 
aloud:  "The  King  orders  you  not  to  leave  the  Cardinal 
as  you  take  him  to  his  palace:  you  are  answerable  for  his 
person." 

So  Rohan  was  arrested,  and  there  is  no  record  who 
sang  Mass  that  day. 


X 

THE  NOTABLES 

AUGUST  15,  1785,  TO  AUGUST  8,  1788 

FOR  the  Queen  the  decision  to  send  the  CardjbaaL-lo- 
trial  was  a  final  action.  The  thing  was  done  — 
and,  for  that  matter,  nearly  done  with. 

When  she  could  find  time  in  an  interval  of  her  occu- 
pations to  write  to  her  brother  Joseph  —  it  was  not  till  a 
fortnight  later  —  the  whole  letter,  though  it  dealt  in  detail 
with  the  affair  as  one  deserving  a  full  explanation,  was 
written  upon  a  tone  of  relief.  It  was  tuned,  all  of  it,  to  one 
key-phrase:  "I  am  delighted  to  think  that  we  shall  never 
hear  of  this  filthy  business  again." 

4  Hardly  was  that  decisive  act  accomplished  than  there 
suddenly  appeared  upon  twenty  points  of  the  horizon,  not 
only  in  frontal  advance  but  upon  either  flank  and  in  either 
rear  of  the  perilous  position  she  occupied,  as  many  separate 
forces  unconnected  or  but  vaguely  in  touch  with  one  another; 
some  directly  antagonistic  to  others,  but  all  having  it  in 
common  that  the  Queen  was  their  objective,  and  that  the 
trial  of  the  Cardinal  had  been  their  signal  for  mobilisati' 
and  the  march. 

It  is  in  the  character  of  unwisdom  to  analyse  and  to  f 
ceed  upon  the  results  of  analysis :  in  the  character  of  wis 
to  integrate  the  whole  point.     The  analysis  of  the  situatic 
just    before    the    Cardinal's    arrest    showed    clearly     one 
great  factor  of   opposition,  the  Rohan  clan.      They 


230  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

everywhere  in  France  contemporary  and  in  France  historical ; 
they  filled  Marie  Antoinette's  generation  and  a  hundred 
years.  The  sisters,  cousins,  brothers-in-law  were  ubiqui- 
tous. Paris  was  conspicuous  with  their  palaces,  the 
Court  with  their  functions,  the  provinces  with  their  loyal 
dependants  or  necessary  adherents.  They  were  the  nucleus 
of  the  strongest  group  that  remained  to  the  wealthy 
nobility.  The  Guemenees,  the  Soubises,  even  the  Condes, 
were  one  with  all  the  Rohans.  A  Rohan  put  to  open  trial 
would  have  in  that  day  the  effect  which  a  chief  of  our 
modern  financial  gang  put  to  open  trial  might  have 
to-day.  Imagine  one  of  our  judges  forced  to  try  a 
Rothschild! 

The  Queen  saw  clearly  —  it  is  always  easy  to  see  one 

simple   thing  clearly  -  -  that   one  gr^gm    force  opposed  to 

her;    she  determined  to  brave  it;  but  latent,  unconscious  of 

Themselves  until   her   own   action  called  them  into   being, 

how  many  other  forces  were  there  not! 

There  was  no  member  of  the  higher  nobility  but  to  a  greater 
or  less  degree  felt  vaguely  a  right  to  immunity  frpm  such 
publicity  —  and  this  man  was  of  the  highest  of  the  nobility, 
a  type.  There  was  no  member  of  the  clergy  but  could 
formulate  a  clear  historical  and  legal  right  to  the  exemption 
of  a  cleric  from  the  judgment  of  a  lay  tribunal  —  and  this 
man  was  of  the  highest  of  the  clergy. 

Had  he  been  Archbishop  of  Toulouse  or  Sens,  or  any 

iolly  Gallic  see  even,  his  case  would  have  been  simpler; 
was  Bishop  of  Strasburg  and  his  metropolitan  was 

Mainz:  the  Archbishop  of  Mainz  was  a  conceivable 
jpponent. 

Me  was  a  prince  of  the  Church :  Rome  had  a  right  to  speak; 

and  almost  did. 


• 


THE  NOTABLES  231 

He  was  a  prince  of  the  Empire:  Vienna  had  a  right  to 
speak  —  and  almost  did. 

Austria  and  France  had  for  now  two  years  been  at  a  strain : 
it  was  just  two  years  since  Joseph  had  written  his  first 
serious  letter  upon  the  Scheldt  to  his  sister :  the  government 
of  Austria  was  embittered,  and  had  for  sovereign  a  man  who 
would  not  refuse  to  trade  upon  the  embarrassment  of  Ver- 
sailles. The  last  negotiations  for  indemnity  against  the 
opening  of  the  Scheldt  were  still  pending.  The  moment 
was  opportune. 

The  Cardinal  could  be  judged  by  but  one  tribunal  of  the 
King's,  and  that  a  quasi-governmental  body  which  had  for 
a  generation  stood  in  increasing  opposition  to  the  Crown  — 
the  Parlement.  For  them  also  the  moment  was  opportune. 

He  could  be  tried  in  but  one  town,  and  that  town  the 
capital,  which  had  now  taken  up  such  a  definite  position  of 
hatred  against  the  Queen;  in  but  one  part  of  that  town,  in 
the  Palais,  right  in  the  heart  of  Paris  upon  which  all  the 
crowds  of  that  unity  so  easily  converge,  and  whose  towers 
were  a  perpetual  symbol  of  the  Monarchy  which  had 
deserted  its  ancient  seat  for  the  isolated  splendour  of 
Versailles. 

But  of  much  more  weight  than  even  these  considerable 
and  separate  bases  of  resistance  was  that  indefinitely  large 
body  of  smaller  and  more  fluctuating  dangers  whose  integra- 
tion the  Queen  should  have  seized  if  she  was  to  save  herself 
from  destruction. 

There  are  in  politics,  as  in  physics,  conditions  of  unstable 
equilibrium  in  which  a  mass  of  fragments,  seemingly  in 
repose,  may  at  a  shock  be  exploded.  Their  energy  lies 
ivjidy  to  be  released  by  the  least  disturbance.  It  is  the 
business  of  statesmanship  to  remove  or  to  dissolve  such  as 


232  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

these  before  large  things  are  undertaken,  lest  a  violent  motion 
explode  them.  A  thousand  such  lay  about  the  palace  of 
Versailles,  threatening  the  Queen.  Whatever  particular 
grudges_  (even  in  friends)  had  had  time  to  grow,  the  mem- 
ories of  hatred  in  enemies,  the  last  of  the  T)i]  Barry's  f nation, 
the  last  of  D'Aiguillon's.  The  suspicions  of  the  devout 
against  her  frivolity,  the  contempt  of  the  philosophical  for  her 
religion,  the  irritation  of  the  politician  against  her  presence 
at  the  Council,  the  necessary  enmity  of  Calonne  —  all  the 
imperfect  and  capricious  pleasures  she  had  failed  to  pursue, 
all  the  losses,  dismissals,  and  humiliations  rightly  or  wrongly 
laid  to  her  charge,  were  there,  not  consciously  prepared,  but 
fatally  bound  to  spring  to  life  if  once  a  body  of  action  against 
her  took  visible  form.  That  form^th^-teial-of  the  Cardinal 
was  to  present.  When  such  a  body  of  opposition  was  in 
motion  all  would  attach  themselves  to  it,  each  from  an  aspect 
of  its  own.  All  the  old  dangers,  as  each  appeared,  made 
alliance  with  the  new  and  immediate  perils. 

Madame  de  La  Motte  was  arrested  three  days  after  the 
Cardinal,  in  the  early  hours  of  the  18th  of  August,  just  back 
at  dawn  in  pomp  from  a  great  provincial  party  in  Cham- 
pagne. Her  husband  fled  to  London,  there  to  meet  a  sym- 
pathy readily  extended  to  such  exiles,  and  to  keep  in  touch 
with  those  centres  of  enmity  against  the  French  Crown  and 
religion  with  which  he  was  familiar.  It  was  on  the  very  day 
when  Paris  was  in  the  first  busy  rumour  upon  the  whole 
matter  —  when  it  was  learned  that  the  Cardinal  had  been 
allowed  to  burn  half  his  papers,  that  La  Motte  had  got 
away,  that  suspicion  was  permitted  to  attach  to  the  Queen  — 
it  was  upon  such  a  day,  the  19th  of  August  —  that  the  Queen 
chose  to  re-open  the  theatre  at  Trianon  and  to  re-open  it 
with  a  play  of  Beaumarchais'. 


THE  NOTABLES  233 

Many  tragedies  in  history  contain  some  such  coincidences 
1  ut  none  so  many  or  so  exact  as  those  which  accompany  and 

etermine  the  tragedy  of  Marie  Antoinette. 
Consider  the  position:    the   legend  of  her  extravagance 
rearisen  —  unjustly.     Trianon,  is  — unjustly  — the  chief 
popular  symbol  of  that  extravagance.     The  theatre  of  Tria- 
non, the  most  in  view,  the  most  obvious  of  its  expenses,  she 
had  wisely  suppressed  during  many  months,     The  park  at 
St.  Cloud,  at  the  gates  of  Paris,  is  a  further  count  in  the 
indictment  against  her.     Her  visit  to  Paris  former  churching 
in  May  has  proved  her  grievously  unpopular:    the  hated 
financial  agreement  with  Anstrifl  in  regard  to  the  Scheldt  is 
developing,  as  it  is  believed  (and  rightly  believed) ,  under  her 
guidance.     Upon  all  this  comes  the  thunder-clap  of  Rohan's 
arrest  —  and  just  as  men  are  beginning  to  comprehend  and 
to  explain  it,  just  as  the  public  and  foreign  enmity  necessarily 
suggest  her  complicity,  say  that  "there  is  more  than  meets 
the  eye,"  that  "you  will  see,  the  Queen  will  make  victims  of 
them  all ;  but  she  is  responsible  for  the  purchase  of  the  gems ! " 
Just    as    the    obvious    lies    were    establishing    themselves 
through  the  embryonic  press  of  those  days  and  the  cafe 
gossip  —  in  that  very  Assumption  week  she  chooses  to  appear 
upon  heritage  at  Trianpn,  dressed  and  painted  for  a  part 
written  by  whom  ?     By  the  man  Caron  — Beaumarchais  by 
purchase  —  whom  all  the  vulgar  now  associated  with  the 
most  successful   attack  upon    the   existing  regime,  whom 
the  older  and  the  higher  world  remember  as  the  associate 
and  perhaps  the  partner  of  the  Jewish  clique  in  London  that 
had  published  the  first  dirty  lie  against  Marie  Antoinette's 
chastity  when  she  was  as  yet  but  a  child  of  eighteen. 

Why  was  such  a  folly  committed  ?     The  answer  to  that 
question  is  all  around  the  reader  to-day.     That  society  did 


234  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

not  know  its  doom.  It  was  "chic,"  it  was  "the  thing"  for 
the  ruling  powers  to  read  and  to  see  acted  criticism  upon 
themselves.  The  little  spice  of  danger  —  they  could  think 
it  no  more  —  was  a  piquant  addition  to  jaded  and  well- 
known  pastimes.  But  the  Queen !  How  terribly  more  great 
and  more  real  the  living  consequences  were  to  be  to  her  than 
to  any  such  abstraction  as  "a  regime" :  she  was  to  see  and  to 
feel  continued  physical  violence,  to  be  menaced  with 
muskets,  to  be  forced  from  her  husband  before  his  death, 
to  have  her  child  dragged  from  her;  she  was  to  be  wholly 
abandoned,  tortured  silently  by  a  subterranean  silence  and 
at  last  publicly  killed. 

To  the  coincidence  of  that  piece  of  folly  another  was  soon 
added.  All  the  succeeding  month  was  full  of  the  last  negotia- 
tions with  Austria:  on  the  19th  of  September  public  dis- 
cussion of  the  necklace  had  gone  far  enough  to  move  her  to 
a  long  letter;  shejvrote  and  explained  disdainfully  to  her 
brother  —  on  the  20th  was  definitely  signed  the  ^obligation 
^njjiepart  of  France  for  half  the  Dutch  indemnity.  Austria 
received  —  for  no  reason  save  the  Queen's  pressure  amllm 
imaginary  relief  from  war  —  about  a  million  pounds*  With 
the  public  debt  already  a  m5t!er^funiebateand  about  to 
become  the  critical  matter  for  action,  it  was  a  monstrous 
thing. 

Budget  for  budget  —  stating  the  proportions  in  terms  of 
modern  revenue  —  it  corresponded  to  what  a  payment  of 
between  ten  millions  or  twelve  would  be  to-day.  Stated  in 
terms  of  ease  of  payment,  of  ability  to  pay,  it  represented  far 
more  than  such  a  sum  would  represent  in  a  modern  budget 
-  and  not  a  penny  of  that  humiliating  obligation  need  have 
been  incurred  but  for  the  Queen. 

Those  historians  who  regard  as  beneath  discussion  the 


THE  NOTABLES  235 

great  popular  cry  of  the  Revolution  that  Marie  Antoinette 
"sent  money  to  Austria"  are  too  ready  to  neglect  whatever 
is  rhetorical.  Tumbrils  of  gold  did  not  pass  —  as  the 
populace  believed  —  but  this  enormous  obligation  was 
incurred,  and  incurred  through  her  and  in  favour  of  her 
brother. 

That  autumn,  winter,  and  spring  the  necklace  was  the 
theme.  The  confused  currents  of  opinion  had  this  in  com- 
mon that  all  accused  the  Queen,  just  as,  in  the  great  modern 
parallel  of  the  Dreyfus  case,  the  confused  currents  of 
opinion,  differing  widely  and  sometimes  in  direct  opposition 
on  vital  points,  had  it  all  in  common  that  the  Catholic  Church 
was  the  real  defendant  throughout  and  the  real  villain  of  the 
piece.  According  to  some  Rohan  was  the  Queen's  lover, 
afraid  to  accuse  her  or  perhaps  too  fond  —  but  at  any  rate  he 
had  purchased  the  necklace  by  her  orders.  According  to 
others  the  La  Motte  had  been  the  Queen's  cat's-paw  in  trick- 
ing Rohan.  According  to  others  again,  more  extreme,  the 
Queen  had  been  herself  the  actual  agent  throughout,  and 
would  now,  by  an  official  pressure,  procure  a  verdict 
against  her  lover  and  her  friend  in  order  to  whitewash  her 
own  character.  In  general  the  absurdity  which  took  most 
hold  was  nearer  to  the  latter  theory  than  to  any  other:  it 
became  a  test  point  simply  whether  Rohan  would  be  ac- 
quitted or  condemned.  Rohan  acquitted,  the  Queen  (by 
some  wildly  illogical  process  of  general  opinion!)  was  sup- 
posed to  be  proved  guilty  of  authorship  in  the  whole  affair. 
If  Rohan  was  condemned,  she  was  equally  guilty  of  author- 
ship —  only,  in  that  case  the  mob  and  the  foreigner  would 
say  that  wicked  judges  had  proved  pliant  to  Court  influence. 

As  in  the  modern  trial  which  I  have  already  quoted  as 
the  great  historic  parallel  to  the  trial  of  Rohan,  no  evidence 


236  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

could  affect  the  minds  of  those  who  had  already  concluded: 
to  make  their  fixed  conclusion  fit  in  with  the  facts  any  con- 
tradiction of  human  psychology  and  human  probabilities 
was  admitted.  Did  some  pornographer  attack  the  Queen 
and  defend  Rohan?  Straightway  he  was  a  hero!  Had 
there  been  a  Pantheon  he  would  have  had  his  burial 
there.  Did  some  anonymous  pamphleteer  assert  his  con- 
viction of  the  Queen's  guilt  ?  Straightway  he  was  an  author- 
ity. Did  some  obscure  and  needy  man  take  money  to  sup- 
port the  immense  power  and  fortunes  of  the  Rohans  against 
the  impoverished  crown  ?  Straightway  (like  those  who  sup- 
ported Jewish  finance  in  the  modern  parallel  I  have  quoted) 
he  became  a  being  full  of  self-sacrifice  defending  the  weak 
and  the  oppressed  against  haughty  power.  The  document 
whereby  the  necklace  was  ordered  was  signed  "Marie  An- 
toinette de  France,'9  -  a  signature  quite  impossible  in  form 
and  not  even  remotely  resembling  in  handwriting  that  of 
the  Queen.  No  matter.  It  must  be  supposed,  "for  this 
occasion  only,"  that  she  wrote  thus  —  once  at  least.  Or,  if 
that  lie  was  too  hard  to  swallow,  then  she  had  had  Rohan 
sign  thus,  or  get  it  signed  thus,  precisely  in  order  to  cover 
her  tracks  by  an  improbable  signature.  Aa^ihing^  at  all 
was  sai4^and  believed  —  especially  in  foreign  countries  — 
providedjtjmplicatedjfie^tteeftr— 

The  preliminary  stages  of  the  trial  were  long.  Oliva 
was  not  arrested  till  late  in  the  winter,  at  Brussels,  fluttering 
and  confused;  Retaux  not  till  the  spring,  at  Geneva. 

The  Queen  endured  those  months  of  increasing  public 
insult  and  increasing  doubt.  She  was  in  her  fourth  preg- 
nancy, and,  what  was  more,  her  character,  to  some  extent 
her  body,  had  aged  somewhat.  She  had  passed  that  thirtieth 
year  which  her  mother  had  foreseen  to  be  critical  for  her;  she 


THE  NOTABLES  237 

had  come  to  what  a  superstition  or  a  coincidence  made  her 
regard  as  the  beginning  of  bitter  years. 

Meanwhile  in  his  room  at  the  Bastille,  where  he  was  con- 
fined, the  Cardinal  held  his  court,  enjoyed  his  receptions, 
and  continued  to  impress  the  Parisians  with  all  the  pomp 
of  his  rank.  It  was  not  till  the  end  of  May  that  he  was 
taken  to  the  Conciergerie  —  the  last  step  before  the  public 
trial;  he  went  by  night  upon  the  29th  of  the  month.  On 
the  next  day,  the  30th  of  May,  1786,  in  the  morning,  the 
Parlement  met  in  the  Grand  Salle,  the  indictments  were 
read  and  the  pleadings  opened. 

That  trial  has  been  described  a  thousand  times.  The 
Rohans  of  every  degree  were  packed  at  the  doors  of  the  court. 
The  deference  they  met  with,  the  immense  crowds  which, 
during  those  long  two  days,  awaited  the  verdict,  the  anxiety 
at  Versailles  —  all  these  are  the  theme  of  every  book  that  has 
dealt  with  this  best  known  of  historic  trials:  they  need  not 
be  repeated  here.  At  the  close  of  the  proceedings  came  the 
significant  thing:  the  public  prosecutor  demanded  no  more 
than  that  the  Cardinal  should  apologise  for  having  thought 
the  Queen  capable  of  such  things,  and  should  resign  the 
Grand  Almonry  — on  that  small  point,  the  forty-nine  judges 
deliberated  a  whole  day  long. 

It  was  dark,  it  was  nine  o'clock  on  the  31st  of  May  when 
their  conclusion  was  announced:  some  would  have  con- 
demned him  to  the  mere  apology  and  resignation  thus 
demanded,  a  few  to  apology  but  not  to  resignation,  the 
majority  were  simply  for  acquittal,  and  at  last,  by  twenty- 
six  votes  to  twenty-three,  Rohan  left  the  court  completely 
absolved.  For  the  rest  the  La  Motte  was  ordered  to  be 
flogged,  branded,  and  imprisoned  at  Salpetiere.  Her  hus- 
band —  in  contumacy  —  to  the  galleys.  Retaux  to  be 


238  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

transported.  As  for  Oliva,  they  declared  her  not  to  fall 
under  the  matter  they  had  to  try  —  she  was  free. 

In  Paris  the  acquittal  of  the  Cardinal  (which  meant  to  the 
mob  simply  the  condemnation  of  the  Queen)  caused  an 
immediate  popular  outburst  of  cheering  and  congratulation. 
They  surrounded  his  palace.  They  demanded  and  obtained 
its  illumination.  He  was  compelled  to  show  himself  and  to 
be  acclaimed.  Then,  as  must  ever  be  the  case  with  such 
false  heroes,  he  was  completely  dropped.  Those  who  had 
done  most  to  secure  the  verdict  were  most  in  a  position  to  know 
the  perils  of  further  ovation.  When  the  King  had  stripped 
him  of  every  possible  function  and  emolument  and  had 
exiled  him  to  the  Velay,  the  Rohans  themselves  were  the  most 
assiduous  to  impose  silence  upon  him  and  to  force  him  back 
into  obscurity.  He  lived,  unnoticed  and  unremembered, 
remote  in  Strasburg;  was  advised,  on  election  to  the  States- 
General  two  years  later,  not  to  sit;  sat,  refused  the  civil 
oath,  emigrated,  survived  the  Queen  by  some  ten  years,  and 
died,  doing  after  that  no  more  evil. 

No  public  insult  could  more  deeply  have  wounded  the 
Queen  than  this  verdict  and  that  demonstration.  Her 
health  was  touched,  but  much  more  her  very  self  was  over- 
shadowed as  she  feared  —  and  she  was  right  —  for  ever. 
She  had  not  even,  as  have  we,  the  resource  of  history.  She 
did  not  know  how  thoroughly  history  can  deal  with  these 
Popish  plots  and  Royal  Necklaces  and  Dreyfus  Innocencies 
and  the  rest,  nor  how  contemptuously  time  and  learning 
together  expose  at  last  every  evil  intrigue.  She  only  knew 
—  and  she  was  right  —  that  in  her  time  the  calumny  would 
never  be  set  right.  And  indeed  this  one  of  the  great  historical 
enthusiasms  for  falsehood  was  not  set  right  till  our  own 
time.  Napoleon,  musing  years  after  upon  the  verdict, 


THE  NOTABLES  239 

called  it,  with  his  broad  judgment  and  his  opportunities  for 
<  comparison  and  knowledge,  the  beginning  of  thejieyglution, 
the  gate  of  her  tomb.  Marie  Antoinette  was  of  no  great 
judgment  — she  was  contemporary  to  it  all;  no  experience  or 
research,  but  only  instinct,  could  guide  her  —  but  some  such 
dreadful  presentiment  of  the  capital  importance  of  the  affair 
stood  fast  in  her  mind :  in  part  it  greatly  ripened  her  view 
of  this  bad  world;  much  more  it  oppressed  or  broke  the 
springs  of  her  spirit,  and  while  there  is  henceforward  in  all 
she  did  new  tenacity  and  much  calculation  of  effort,  there  is, 
much  more,  an  inner  certitude  of  doom. 

The  King  went  off  to  Cherbourg  where  Calonne,  still  seek- 
ing  to    re-establish   the   finances    by    an   extended   public 
employment  of  labour  and  by  display,  had  achieved  the  first 
stage  of  that  magnificent  artificial  harbour,  the  model  of  all 
i  its  kind  that  were  to  follow  in  Europe  and  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean.   Everywhere  Louis  met  with  easy  but  fervid  acclam- 
ation.    He  had  never  seen  the  provinces  before.     He  came 
Iback  radiant.     The   new  warmth  and  zeal,  which,  under 
another  aspect  and  reacting  against  other  stimuli,  were  so 

•  soon  to  produce  the  great  change,  had  already  touched  the 
people,  and  he  had  bathed,  as  it  were,  in  a  public  energy 
which,  till  then,  cabined  in  Versailles   or  wearied   by  the 

•  cliques  of  Paris,  he  had  never  known.    All  that  enthusiasm, 
I  his  and  his  people's,  he  communicated  in  many  letters  to  the 
< Queen;   but  she  had  suffered  her  blow,  and  nothing  now 
i  could  undeceive  her  but  that  fate  was  coming.    Her  relation 
I  the  Archduke,  the  last  of  so  many  royal  visitors  at  Versailles, 
ihad  gone.     In  July  her  fourth  child  was  born  —  a  girl;  and 

•  that  same  summer  every  stranger  that  passed  through  Paris 
i  noted  the  beginnings  of  the  storm.     The  pamphlets  were 

awake;    the  press  had  risen  to  a  continuous  pressure  of 


240  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


suggestion,  anecdote,  and  attack,  and  the  necessity  for  facing 
and  solving  the  violent  fiscal  problem  was  no  longer  a  theory 
to  be  discussed  politically  but  a  thing  to  be  done. 

The  Court  was  brilliant  in  a  last  leaping  flame.  Fontaine- 
bleau  that  autumn  was  glorious  with  colours  and  men;  the 
balls  at  Versailles  that  winter  shone  with  a  peculiar  and 
memorable  splendour  —  but  it  was  the  end.  There  were  to 
be  no  more  glories :  —  the  last  ball  had  been  given,  the  last 
progress  made. 

Calonne,  whose  French  audacity  might  a  little  earlier 
have  saved  the  State,  dared  an  experiment  which  failed  - 
but  which,  from  its  nature  and  the  things  it  could  but  breed, 
led  on  to  the  Revolution.  He  determined  (and  he  persuaded 
the  King)  to  summon,  for  consultation  upon  the  finances  and 
the  betterment  of  the  realm,  a  council  of  all  those  who  led 
in  the  nobility,  the  Church,  the  Parlements,  the  Services, 
the  great  municipalities.  This  convention  was  to  be  named, 

Iupon  the  parallel  of  the  last  similar  summons  —  now  some 
two  centuries  old  —  an  assembly  of  "the  Notables."  The 
Ministry  were  given  the  King's  decision  suddenly,  upon  the 
29th  of  December.  The  Notables  were  to  meet  upon  that 
day  month.  More  than  one  critic  —  especially  among  the 
aged  —  foresaw,  the  dyke  once  opened,  what  a  flood  would 
follow;  all,  wise  or  unwise,  felt  that  the  meeting  would  be 
the  end  of  most  that  they  had  known  and  the  beginning  of 
quite  new  perils  and  perhaps  new  energies  or  a  new  world. 
Whether  or  no  the  Queen  were  hurt  at  a  sudden  determina- 
tion in  which  she  had  taken  no  part  nor  even  had  a  voice, 
she  very  rapidly  in  the  next  six  months  rose  to  hold  the 
Government  in  her  hands:  thenceforward  to  the  meeting 
of  the  States-General  and  the  opening  of  the  Revolution,  her 
decision  and  her  vigour  take  part  in  all  those  acts  —  a  dozen 


THE  NOTABLES  241 

at  the  most  —  which  proved  ultimately  the  authors  of  her 
destruction. 

The  Notables  met  —  or  rather  did  not  meet  —  upon  the 
day  named,  the  29th  of  January,  '87.  They  came  to  Paris 
on  the  appointed  day,  they  met  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  in 
drawing-rooms  and  elsewhere;  but  those  provincial  mayors, 
great  judges,  and  members  of  the  high  nobility  had  to  wait 
and  chafe  for  many  days  before  they  were  legally  convened. 
Criticism  and  violence  of  tongue  had  time  to  grow;  there 
was  a  sense  of  weakness,  of  anarchy  even,  in  the  petty 
details  of  governmental  action  following  on  such  delay. 
When  they  did  meet,  before  their  debates  had  time  to 
•  develop,  one  event  after  another  was  transforming  every- 
thing around  the  Queen. 

The  Polignacs  had  quarrelled  with  her;  Madame  de 
Polignac,  her  life-long  friend,  had  threatened  to  retire  from 
her  post  with  the  Children  of  France.  Many  —  most  — 
had  followed  them;  all  whom  the  Polignacs  had  benefited, 
through  the  Queen,  for  so  many  years.  A  last  and  new 
faction,  more  intimate,  more  wounding,  more  in  possession 
of  her  secrets,  and  more  dangerous  than  any  other  was 
thus  formed. 

Vergennes  was  just  dead;  the  King,  should  Calonne  fail 
in  the  great  business  of  Reform  which  the  Assembly  of 
Notables  had  opened,  would  be  left  without  a  Chief  Minister, 
and  the  Queen's  place  was  plainly  ready  for  her  in  his 
council-room. 

More  than  these,  the  La  Motte  had  escaped  from  prison, 
and  had  fled  (of  course)  to  London. 

There  was  not  then,  as  there  is  to-day,  in  London  a  vast 
and  organised  journalistic  system  by  which  news  is  afforded, 
withheld,  or  falsified  at  will.  Nay,  even  had  there  been  such 


242  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  monopoly,  journals  had  not  one-hundredth  of  the  power 
they  have  to-day.  Again,  those  who  governed  England  then 
were  usually  well-travelled  and  were  acquainted  with  the 
French  tongue.  Again,  there  existed,  what  has  since  failed 
us,  strong  independent  opinion  and  a  cultivated  middle  class. 
The  female  La  Motte  was,  therefore,  not  welcomed  with  those 
transports  of  affection  or  homage  which  she  would  receive 
to-day;  but  there  was  already  sufficient  horror  at  continen- 
tal procedure  and  sufficient  certitude  in  the  baseness  of 
all  administration  of  justice  abroad  to  stand  her  in  very 
good  stead.  The  nourishment  of  the  public  conscience  upon 
the  sins  of  foreigners  had  already  begun.  La  Motte  was 
something  of  a  martyr,  and,  as  she  seemed  poor,  could  make 
some  livelihood  out  of  the  public  folly.  She  began  that 
series  of  pretended  "Revelations"  which  were  in  some  few 
months  to  be  among  the  principal  torments  of  the  Queen. 
Whether  (like  Esterhazy  by,  our  Press  in  the  parallel  I  have 
already  drawn)  she  was  bribed  to  say  such  things,  we  have 
no  record.  At  any  rate  her  publications  paid  her  —  for 
a  time. 

jf  It  has  been  said  that  Marie  Antoinette  helped  the  La  Motte 
I  to  fly  from  prison.  It  may  be  so.  When  in  a  great  public 
quarrel  the  innocent  side  is  blundering  and  unwise,  its  acts 
of  unwisdom  are  incalculable.  Marie  Antoinette  had 
certainly  sent  to  have  the  woman  visited  in  prison.  It  is 
possible  that,  as  she  had  hoped  a  public  trial  could  help  her, 
so  she  hoped  now  the  La  Motte  loose  would  do  less  harm 
than  the  La  Motte  imprisoned  and  gagged,  wuth  every 
rumour  free  to  circulate.  Perhaps  she  was  wholly  ignorant 
of  the  whole  matter.  Anyhow,  the  La  Motte  was  loose  - 
and  the  flood  of  calumny  springing  from  London  flowed 
against  the  Queen  and  did  its  work.  She,  at  Versailles, 


THE  NOTABLES  243 

<  grew  every  day  to  be  more  and  more  absorbed  in  the  crisis 
which  was  developing  with  such  rapidity  —  for  it  was 
already  apparent  as  March  proceeded  that  the  experiment 

i 'of  the  Notables  had  failed.     Calonne  had  still  his  native 

i  courage  and  his  peculiar  rapidity  of  manoeuvre ;  he  fought 
his  hand  hard  —  but  the  opposition  was  too  plain,  too  large, 

;  and  too  strong  for  him.  His  plan  had  been  just  —  he  had 
conceived  the  reformation  of  lightening  the  worst  taxes 

;  and  of  arranging  the  more  equal  redistribution  of  the  burden 

'  upon  land  —  a  new  redistribution  in  which  no  privilege 
should  exist  of  rank  or  custom  —  and,  more  daring,  but  still, 
in  the  tradition  of  Turgot,  he  had  planned  an  adumbration 
of  the  Revolution  by  proposing  provincial,  local,  and  par- 
ochial assemblies. 

Two  currents  of  hostility  met  him :  one  that  the  Notables 
in  the  main  stood  personally  for  privilege;  the  other  that 
everyone  in  France  desired  more  change,  and  above  all,  more 
"democratisation"  of  the  centre  of  the  national  machinery. 
There  was  an  appetite  for  debate,  for  V facts";  a  demand 
for  exact  accounts  and  public  audit  and  public  acceptance 
of  taxes,  v 

These  two  currents  gained  their  intensity,  however,  from 
the  legend  which  had  gathered  round  Calonne,  as  the 
Financier  of  the  Deficit  and  the  Adviser  of  the  Throne.  A 

i  symbolic  character,  which  was  never  his  but  which  has 
endured  almost  to  our  own  time,  was  popularly  super- 
imposed upon  him,  a  character  of  mere  frivolity,  of  mere 
extravagance  in  time  of  security,  especially  of  subservience 
to  fancied  expensive  whims  of  the  Queen. 

She,  alas !  thought  to  do  a  public  service  and  a  strong  one 
by  persuading  Louis  to  the  dismissal  of  his  Minister  when 
his  failure  with  the  Notables  was  proved.  She  won.  On 


244  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  8th  of  April,  1787,  Calonne  fell,  to  be  exiled,  to  fly  (of 
course)  to  London,  and  thence,  only  too  probably,  to  help 
swell  that  river  of  evil  speaking  and  writing  which,  since 
her  thirtieth  year,  flowed  so  regularly  against  the  character 
of  Marie  Antoinette;  but  which  now  broke  all  bounds  and 
filled  half  the  pamphlets. 

If  in  this  she  acted  publicly,  decidedly,  and  to  her  hurt, 
in  her  next  equally  decisive  step  the  Queen  acted  even  more 
publicly,  more  decisively,  and  more  both  to  her  own  hurt  and 
that  of  the  alien  populace  whom  she  already  detested  but 
desired,  in  such  a  crisis,  to  rule.  After  some  mention  of 
Necker,  she  forced  Lomenie  upon  the  King. 


The  writing  of  history,  more  than  any  other  liberal  occu- 
pation, suffers  from  routine.  I  will  not  detain  the  reader  of 
this  chronicle  with  any  long  digression  upon  the  effect  of 
the  French  Revolution,  upon  the  nature,  the  prodigious 
force,  and  the  universality  of  what  may  be  called,  according 
to  the  taste  of  the  scholar,  the  Catholic  reaction  or  the 
Catholic  renaissance  of  our  day.  Still  less  would  I  disturb 
the  progress  of  my  story  with  a  divagation  upon  the  ease 
with  which  our  academies  here  fall  into  every  trap  set  them 
by  the  enemies  of  the  Faith  abroad  — whether  those  enemies 
be  random  politicians,  high  stoics,  skeptics  of  a  noble 
temper,  common  usurers,  or  men  fanatical  against  all  re- 
striction of  the  senses.  But  I  will  so  far  delay  the  reader  at 
this  moment  as. to  state  plainly  a  succession  of  undoubted 
historical  and  contemporary  truths  in  no  particular  order, 
and  to  beg  him  to  reach  a  conclusion  by  a  comparison  of 
them  all. 

It  is  in  thejcotitine  of  our  universities  to  say  that  Catholi- 


THE  NOTABLES  245 

cism  was  struck  to  death  by  two^great  upheavals ;  theJLeiaiv 
mation  opened  it  to  attack;  the  Revolution  dealt  the  mortal 
blow :jt  is  now  said  to  be  dying,  and  especially  in  France. 
This  is  the  first  truth ;  that  our  universities  say  these  things ; 
some  regret,  some  are  pleased ;  but  it  is  believed  and  said  in 
either  camp.  Next,  it  is  true  that  Louis  XVI.  practised  his 
religion  and  believed  in  it.  Next,  it  is  true  that  his  Queen, 
never  wholly  abandoning  the  rule  of  religion  —  far  from 
it  —  was  now,  in  1787,  particularly  devoted  and  increas- 
ingly exact  in  her  observance;  daily,  as  she  daily  suffered, 
more  penetrated  inwardly  by  the  spirit  of  the  Church^ 
A  fourth  truth  is  that  no  single  man  pretending  to  high 
intelligence  in  that  generation  of  Frenchmen  believed  in 
more  than  a  God :  the  only  quarrel  was  between  those  who 
believed  in  such  a  Being  and  those  who  denied  this  last  of 
dogmas.  The  fifth  truth  is,  that  but  yesterday  all  the 
French  hierarchy  and  all  the  80,000  priests  of  the  Church  — 
save,  perhaps,  three  —  suffered  the  loss  of  all  corporate 
property  and  all  established  income  rather  than  vary  in 
one  detail  from  the  discipline  of  Rome.  The  sixth  truth 
is  that  the  prominent  and  outstanding  names  of  the  French 
hierarchy  or  of  the  Church's  defenders  before  and  during 
this  revolutionary  crisis  were:  Rohan,  an  evil  liver,  a  cheat, 
a  fool,  and  a  blackguard;  Talleyrand  something  even  lower 
in  morals  than  he  was  higher  in  wit;  the  Archbishop  of 
Narbonne -- living  six  hundred  miles  from  his  See  with 
his  own  niece  for  mistress;  Gregoire,  a  full  schismatic  and 
in  his  way  an  honest  man;  Maury,  a  vulgar  politician, 
like  one  of  our  own  vulgar  politicians  to-day,  a  priest 
out  for  a  fortune,  a  sort  of  "Member  of  Parliament,"  a 
petty  persecutor  of  the  Pope  in  person  and  of  the  Papacy, 
in  time  a  Cardinal  —  and  this  man  Lomenie.  The 


246  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

seventh  truth  is  that  Marie  Antoinette  (who  practised  her 
religion)  ardently  supported  Lomenie  and  befriended  him, 
and  that,  therefore,  Louis  (who  was  devout)  accepted  him 
for  Chief  Minister. 

Read  these  undoubted  truths  together  and  decide  whether 
the  Faith  has  advanced  or  receded  in  a  hundred  years. 


Who  was  Lomenie  de  Brienne?  He  had  had,  these 
twenty  years,  a  reputation  for  what  is  vaguely  called  in 
aristocracies  "ability."  He  had  presented  the  address 
of  the  Clergy  in  the  Coronation  year.  He  was  Arch- 
bishop of  Toulouse.  He  suited  La  Fayette's  idea  of 
honesty.  He  had  inordinate  passions.  He  was  yet  fur- 
ther and  later  Archbishop  of  Sens  —  for  the  sake  of  the 
pickings.  He  had  led  with  no  scruple  of  honour  the 
opposition  to  Calonne  in  the  Notables.  Mercy  favoured 
him.  Vermond,  the  Queen's  old  tutor,  who  owed  all  to 
him,  supported  his  claim,  and  Marie  Antoinette  imposed 
him.  But  who  was  he? 

He  was  an  active,  careful,  and  laborious  atheist  to 
whom  the  King,  by  a  scruple,  refused  the  See  of  Paris, 
holding  "that  the  See  of  Paris  is  peculiar  and  had  always 
better  be  held  by  a  man  who  believed  in  God."  He  was  a 
wit,  he  loved  wealth  inordinately  —  and  that  was  all.  He 
had  his  reputation  with  the  wealthy,  but  no  action  of  his 
remains.  Such  was  the  hierarchy  of  that  moment,  and  to 
a  circle  of  such  men  was  power  restricted.  And  Lomenie 
de  Brienne  was  made  and  put  into  his  seat  by  the  advice 
of  Vermond,  Marie  Antoinette's  old  tutor,  by  the  advice 
of  Joseph  II.,  a  protector  of  religious  doubt;  he  repaid  her 
by  a  constant  devotion. 


THE  NOTABLES  247 

It  was  on  May-day,  1787,  that  this  personage  was 
put,  with  an  inferior  title,  at  the  head  of  the  finances, 
a  position  which -- now  more  than  ever --was  neces- 
sarily the  chief  post  in  the  French  State.  On  the  25th 
the  Notables,  from  whom  he  came  and  whom  he  had 
led,  were  dissolved.  .  .  . 

Fersen,  eager  to  spend  one  last  day  in  Versailles,  had 
come  for  a  few  flying  hours.  He  watched  their  dissolution 
as  a  show  ...  he  did  not  return  till  the  eve  of  the 
Revolution,  and,  once  returned,  he  remained  a  pledged 
sacrifice,  a  servant,  to  the  end.  .  .  . 

The  Notables  had  done  nothing,  and  Lomenie  himself 
proceeded  to  do  much  the  same;  or  rather  to  bring  forward 
for  the  third  time  as  an  active  proposition  —  for  the  mil- 
lionth as  a  theory  propounded  —  the  scheme  of  financial 
reform  which  every  predecessor  had,  in  one  shape  or 
another,  presented.  The  destruction  of  the  fossil  com- 
partments —  walls  which  separated  various  antique  forms 
of  taxation,  a  larger  total  tax,  a  more  equitable  distribution ; 
the  abolition  of  imposts  uselessly  vexatory;  loans  to  oil  the 
wheels  of  change. 

The  Notables  had  gone:  but  to  register  such  decrees  a 
power  parallel  to  that  of  the  Throne  must  —  as  we  saw  in 
the  case  of  Turgot  —  concur.  The  permanent  body  of 
legal  advisers  to  the  Prince  —  a  conception  as  old  as  Rome 
and  morally  in  continuity  with  the  Empire  —  the  body 
which  had  tried  Rohan  —  the  Parlement  —  pleading  the 
absence  of  a  regular  budget  and  of  public  discussion, 
refused  to  register,  and  within  three  months  of  Lomenie  de 
Brienne's  appointment,  the  Parlement  in  session  had  pro- 
ceeded from  Sabattier's  famous  pun1  to  affirm  that  no 

x"  Vous  demandez  1'ftat  des  recettes  —  ces  sont  les  £tats  generaux  qu'il  nous  faut.V 


248  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

permanent  impost  could  be  levied  upon  the  nation  without 
the  summons  and  consent  of  the  States-General. 

The  reader  should  pause  upon  that  phrase. 

The  conception  that  All  should  rule  is  cceval  with  society. 

But  the  words  so  used  by  Sabattier  were  not  a  mere  opinion 
nor  a  mere  reiteration  of  justice.  They  were  spoken  in 
that  assembly  of  lawyers  which  formed  the  chief  body  of 
the  State,  and  once  spoken  in  such  an  air  they  were  creative. 

X^'sjiemorable  declaration  of  July,  1787,  launched  the 
JEtesobttiea. 


Nothing  can  reinvigorate  itself  or  snatch  itself  from 
decay  save  by  a  return  upon  itself  and  a  recapture  of  its 
own  past.  To  revive  the  States-General  was  to  bring  back 
to  life  the  vigour  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  to  renew  —  at 
the  close  of  this  last  long  and  glorious  but  exhausted  phase 
in  the  national  life  —  the  permanent  energy  of  Gaul. 

When  in  the  eleventh  century  the  great  transition  from 
the  Dark  Ages  to  mediaeval  civilisation  was  accomplished, 
there  came,  along  with  the  new  Gothic  architecture  and 
the  new  national  tongues,  as  the  last  fruit  of  that  florescence, 
an  institution  known  in  each  province  of  Christendom 
by  some  local  name  (for  the  creation  was  local  and  spon- 
taneous) but  everywhere  bearing  the  same  characters,  in 
formation,  object,  and  inner  nature.  This  Institution  had 
for  its  purpose  the  affirmation  of  a  doctrine  fundamental 
in  the  Faith,  that  sovereignty  lies  and  can  only  lie  with  the 
community.  This  Institution  had  for  instrument  where- 
with to  enforce  that  right  a  conception  at  once  as  mystical 
and  as  plain  as  any  that  the  Faith  has  admitted  or  revealed 
in  her  strict  dogmas,  the  conception  of  representation:  two 


THE   NOTABLES  249 

men  should  speak  for  thousands;  the  spirit  of  a  commun- 
ity should  enter  and  be  seen  through  individuals  who 
should  speak  with  the  voice  of  districts;  these  represen- 
tatives should  be  the  very  numbers  for  whom  they  stood: 
an  institution  as  tangible,  as  real,  as  visible  as  the  Sacra- 
ment; as  mysterious  as  the  Presence  of  the  Lord.  It  was 
a  miracle  of  faith,  but  it  conquered;  and  even  to-day,  woe- 
fully corrupt,  there  resides  in  Representation  something  of 
majesty  and  a  power  in  moments  of  great  danger  or  of 
great  national  desire  to  gleam  for  a  moment  through  the 
dead  body  of  an  Institution  whose  whole  principle  of 
popular  sanctity  has  been  forgotten. 

The  theory  of  Representation  sprang,  I  say,  naturally 
from  that  young  and  happy  time  when  Europe  arose  from 
sleep:  the  century  of  the  Christian  reaction  against  Asia. 

The  valleys  of  the  Pyrenees,  a  scene  of  continual  armed 
endeavours,  spurred  on  by  the  constant  pressure  of  Islam, 
first  organised  the  idea. 

The  cool  and  cleanly  little  town  of  Jaca  —  an  outpost 
on  the  Roman  road  into  Spain  that  led  down  to  the  fron- 
tiers of  the  Moors  —  the  little  frontier  town  of  Jaca  saw 
the  first  strict  gathering  of  the  kind  in  the  very  first  of  the 
Crusades:  but  Jaca  was  not  alone;  it  was  throughout 
Christendom  a  natural,  a  simultaneous  growth.  The 
southern  cities  of  Gaul,  the  great  provinces,  Languedoc, 
Beam,  distant  and  isolated  Brittany,  the  compact  England 
of  the  thirteenth  century,  followed;  lastly,  and  not  till  the 
opening  of  the  fourteenth  century,  a  united  and  majestic 
gathering  of  Representatives,  designed  to  bring  before  the 
Crown  at  Paris  the  voice,  complaint,  or  will  of  all  its  sub- 
jects, emerged. 

These  assemblies,  a  Cortes  in  Spain,  a  Parliament  in 


250  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

England,  were  in  France  called  Estates  —  and  that  rare  one 
which  stood,  not  for  one  province  of  Gaul,  but  for  all 
combined,  was  known  as  the  States-General.  Like  every 
other  institution  of  its  kind  it  was  alive  with  the  mediaeval 
passion  for  Reality.  Not  abstract  statistics  nor  some 
crude  numerical  theory,  but  the  facts  of  society  were 
recognised  in,  or  rather  everywhere  translated  into,  these 
representative  bodies.  There  were  corps  of  nobles  — 
since  the  Middle  Ages,  descending  from  the  Roman  centur- 
ies and  their  rich  landed  class,  had  nobles  for  a  reality. 
The  priests  were  separate;  the  commoners.  In  some  cases 
(notably  in  towns)  special  corporations  had  special  dele- 
gates ;  in  all  —  especially  in  the  States-General  of  France 
—  the  various  aspects  of  the  State  were  present  in  the 
shape  of  innumerable  statements  and  mandates  enforced 
upon  the  Representatives  (and  therefore  the  servants)  of 
clerical  and  commercial  corporations,  of  territorial  units, 
of  municipal  authorities. 

So  long  as  the  high  attempt  of  the  Middle  Ages  was 
maintained  so  long  these  councils  flourished.  That 
attempt  bent  down  and  failed  in  the  sixteenth  century  — 
and  with  it  declined,  corrupted,  or  disappeared  the  cor- 
porate assemblies  which  were  to  the  political  sincerity  of 
the  Middle  Ages  what  the  universities  were  to  its  intel- 
lectual eagerness,  the  Gothic  to  its  majestic  insistence  upon 
eternal  expression. 

In  certain  places  the  advent  of  the  Renaissance  in  the 
sixteenth  century  closed  the  story  of  representation;  in 
others,  under  the  influence  of  the  Reformation,  became 
a  form.  In  the  two  chief  centres  of  the  West  two  varied 
fortunes  attached  to  the  two  failing  branches  of  that  great 
mediaeval  scheme.  In  Protestant  England  the  form  of 


THE  NOTABLES  251 

Representation  survived;  in  Catholic  France  the  memory. 
By  one  of  those  ironies  in  which  History  or  Providence 
delights,  the  English  oligarchy,  which,  in  the  phrase  of  a 
principal  English  writer,  "had  risen  upon  the  ruins  of 
Religion,"  the  Howards,  the  "Cromwells,"  the  Cecils,  and 
the  rest,  maintained  the  form  of  The  House  of  "Commons." 
The  squires  used  that  organ  in  the  seventeenth  century  to 
destroy  the  power  of  a  Crown  whose  own  folly  had,  through 
the  plunder  of  the  Monasteries,  led  to  its  own  complete 
impoverishment  and  to  the  enrichment  of  the  gentry. 
The  squires  maintained  that  Crown  but  kept  it  as  their 
salaried  servant,  and  thus  throughout  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  fossil  of  a  representative  system  was  in  England 
not  only  cherished  but  actively  cherished  to  serve  us  as 
the  armour  of  privilege.  Parliament  remained  intensely 
national,  full  of  sacred  ceremonies  and  forms,  and 
still  using  conveniently  to  the  rich  some  shadow  of 
that  theory  of  national  sovereignty  which,  in  breaking 
with  the  Faith,  the  nation  had  broken  with,  perhaps 
for  ever:  whether  for  ever  or  not  our  own  immediate 
future  will  show. 

For  Europe  the  strange  accident  by  which  dry-bones 
Representation  thus  survived  in  England  was  of  vast  con- 
sequence. This  fossil  bridged  the  gulf  between  the  liv- 
ing Parliaments  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  advent  of 
modern  democracy  —  and  by  a  curious  inquiry  into  the 
archaeology  and  the  extinct  functions  of  English  public  life, 
Catholic  Europe  has  begun  to  reconstruct  its  own  past. 
For  England  the  consequences  of  the  survival  are  known 
to  all  who  have  watched  the  complexion  of  the  Commons 
and  type  of  membership  that  House  enjoys  —  and  the 
strange  mode  of  recruitment  of  the  Lords. 


252  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

In  France  the  fortunes  of  Representation,  that  medi- 
aeval thing,  became,  from  the  moment  when  the  Middle 
Ages  failed,  very  different.  The  States-General  stood 
by  the  side  of,  and  nominally  informing,  a  Roman  and 
centralised  sovereignty:  they  were  not,  like  the  English 
Parliament,  an  institution  immixed  in  and  at  last  iden- 
tical with,  a  wealthy  oligarchy;  they  were  an  institution 
that  stood  by  the  side  of  and  was  at  last  suppressed  by  a 
national  despotism.  They  ceased  abruptly  (in  1614), 
but  they  never  lost  their  soul.  Should  they  hear  the  call 
to  resurrection  they  could  rise  whole  and  quick,  a  com- 
plete voice  of  the  nation  to  counsel  or  to  command.  In 
July,  1787,  with  the  protestation  of  the  Parlement  of  Paris 
and  its  appeal  to  the  past,  that  call  had  come,  and  from 
that  moment  onward  it  was  plain  that  all  France  would 
now  soon  be  found  in  action.  Within  two  years  the  thing 
was  decided. 


What  was  the  Queenji  position  those  two  ypars  ?     She 
was  in  the  saddle.     Her  fulness  of  life,  her  firmness  of  pur- 
pose, had  come  upon  her  quickly.     She  was  already  divorced 
from  joy;  she  was  already,  and  for  the  first  time,  mixed 
^constantly  with  public  affairs.     It  is  sometimes  written  that 
Jtomenie  de  Brienne  "gave  her  a  place  in  the  Council." 
yThat  is  nonsense.     She  chose  to  enter  publicly  what,  in 
/  private,  had  been  hers  since  the  March  of  1787  at  the  latest; 
what  had  been  partly  hers  long  before.     Her  strength  of 
utterance,  her  now  formative  disillusions  (for  disillusion- 
ment is  formative  in  women),  her  apparent  peril  (for  peril 
is  formative  in  those  who  desire  to  govern) ,  her  recent  griev- 
ous humiliation  and  suffering  (for  these  are  formative  in  all), 


THE   NOTABLES  253 

formed  her  and  gave  her  fixed  and  constructive  power. 
It  was  most  imperfectly,  at  moments  disastrously,  used ;  but 
if  the  reader  would  understand  the  violent  five  years  which 
follow  this  moment  and  culminated  in  the  crash  of  the  throne, 
he  must  first  seize  the  fact  that,    though  vast  impersonaKj 
forces  at  issue   were   melting   and   recasting  France,  andi 
therefore    Europe,    the    personality  nearest  the  executive// 
throughout  was  that  of  Marie  Antoinette.  w 

In  her  room  at  Versailles  met  the  coming  intriguers 
during  the  struggle  with  the  Parlement  under  Brienne. 
She  it  was  against  whom  the  dishonoured  Orleans,  with 
the  instinct  of  a  demagogue,  intrigued  and  whispered.  She 
it  was  who  spoke  of  "a  necessary  rigour"  when  the  fight- 
ing begun;  she — we  may  presume  or  be  certain  —  who 
forbade  the  King  to  fly  in  the  days  of  October;  she  cer- 
tainly upon  whom  the  great  effort  of  Mirabeau  turned ;  she 
who  planned  or  rather  guided  the  escape  to  Varennes;  she 
who  principally  suffered  from  the  recapture;  she  who  con- 
stantly and  actively  advised  Vienna,  Mercy,  Fersen,  Mallet, 
in  the  perilous  months  that  followed  that  failure;  she  who 
sustained  the  Court  after  the  20th  of  June;  she  against 
whom  Paris  charged  on  the  10th  of  August:  hers  was  that 
power  the  memory  of  which  exasperated  the  Revolution  and 
drove  even  its  military  advisers  to  useless  reprisals,  and  to 
her  death  at  last. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  powers  of  that  awful  time  were  per- 
sonal or  of  this  world  —  far  from  it.  Nor  do  I  say  that  you 
:  will  not  find  crowded  into  that  little  seon  of  years  a  greater 
crowd  of  high  and  individual  wills  than  a  century  may 
count  in  meaner  times  -  -  there  were  a  regiment  of  active, 
organising,  and  creative  minds  astir  within  a  mile  of  Notre 
Dame.  Still  less  do  I  pretend  that  the  Queen's  judgment, 


254  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

her  rapidity,  her  energy,  and  her  certitude  were  comparable 
to  any  of  a  hundred  or  more  in  that  arena.  She  was 
nothing  compared  with  their  greatest,  little  compared  with 
their  least.  But  I  say  that  close  to  the  executive  —  to  that 
which,  until  August,  '92,  could  command  soldiers,  sign 
edicts,  and,  above  all,  correspond  with  foreign  Powers  —  its 
adviser,  its  constant  moderator,  at  times  its  very  self,  was 
the  Queen. 

,  Her  last  child,  the  baby  of  eleven  months,  was  now  in 
the  July  of  1787,  dead.  It  was  the  second  death  of  a  thing 
loved  that  she  had  known  —  her  mother's  the  first;  it  was 
the  first  death  she  had  seen  of  a  thing  loved.  In  the  deser- 
tion of  her  friends,  the  great  part  she  had  to  play,  the  open 
wound  of  the  necklace  verdict,  she  took  that  death  as  but 
one  more  poignant  sorrow.  The  little  girl  had  been  ailing 
for  but  four  days:  Marie  Antoinette  shut  herself  up  with 
her  husband  and  his  sister  for  one  day  in  Trianon  to  recover 
from  that  shock.  She  returned  to  act. 

She  applauded  and  sustained  her  husband  —  or  rather 
Brienne  —  during  the  struggle  with  the  Parlement  all  July. 
She  heard  (and  .despised)  the  call  for  theJStates-General. 
When  the  Lit  de  Justice,  the  solemn  ceremony  by  which  the 
King  could  enforce  the  registration  of  his  edicts  in  spite  of 
the  Parlement's  refusal,  was  held  on  the  6th  of  August,  it 
was  held  at  Versailles,  as  it  were  under  the  Queen's  eye:  the 
Parlement  replied  by  refusing  to  admit  the  registration  so 
made. 

-;  The  Parisian  crowd  surrounded  the  Parlement  in  Paris 
and  applauded :  not  for  this  or  that,  nor  for  the  nature  of  the 
taxes  protested,  nor  for  anything  but  for  that  prime  principle 
—  that  the  States -General  should  be  summoned.  The 
Queen  ordered  economies:  they  came  into  force  at  once, 


THE  NOTABLES  255 

that  very  week.  Those  who  lost  their  posts  became  new 
enemies  of  hers:  the  economies  were  nothing  to  the  crowd: 
she  gained  nothing  with  the  public :  she  lost  more  with  Ver- 
sailles. It  was  dangerous  for  her  to  approach  the  Capital. 

If  she  had  hoped,  by  an  economy  that  seemed  to  her  so 
important,  to  affect  the  Parlement,  Marie  Antoinette  was  in 
grevious  error:  in  error  from  that  lack  of  perspective  and 
oJL#ri{>  which  her  position,  and  above  all  her  character, 
had  left  in  her.  Within  a  week  of  it  all  the  Parlement  had 
replied  by  a  renewed  refusal  to  register,  a  renewed  demand 
for  the  States-General,  and  was  away  at  Troyes,  exiled  but 
sitting  in  full  power,  deliberating  and  enthusiastically  sup- 
ported by  Paris  old  and  new.  At  Versailles,  Lomenie  de 
Brienne,  the  Queen's  man,  demanded  the  title,  beyond  the 
practical  power,  of  Chief  Minister:  such  a  demand  led  to 
the  resignation  of  what  little  brains  were  left  in  the  Council. 
In  September  he  compromised  with  the  Parlement,  and  let 
it  return. 

Lomenie  next  formulated  decrees  which  proposed  indeed 
to  rely  on  ordinary  taxation  —  but  to  an  extraordinary  extent 
and  on  a  novel  scheme  —  and  to  call  the  States-General 
within  five  years:  he  intended  (as  did  the  Queen)  to  adjourn 
and  surely  to  drop  the  meeting  of  the  States- General  alto- 
gether. In  November,  when  a  majority  in  the  Parlement 
was  secured  by  the  absence  of  some,  perhaps  the  purchase 
of  others,  he  caused  the  King,,  to  meet  that  body  —  and 
i  then  raised  its  anger  again  by  registering  without  rwmtrng 
votes  and,  as  it  were,  by  the  autocratic  power  of  the  King. 
If,  as  is  possible,  the  Queen  did  not  advise  or  countenance 
this  last  act,  at  any  rate  the  whole  tone  of  her  correspon- 
dence applauds  the  decision. 

The  consequences  following  on  this  error  were  immediate. 


256  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Orleans,  now  the  Queen's  chief  enemy,  made  himself  a 
spokesman  of  discontent  and  was  exiled  to  the  provinces ;  he 
attributed  his  disgrace  to  the  Queen.  Sabattier  and  Tieteau 
de  St.  Just  were  arrested  on  the  bench  itself.  The  States- 
General  precisely  because  it  had  been  proposed  to  consider 
them  "in  five  years,"  and  because  the  Parlement  had  insisted 
on  an  earlier  date,  were  more  in  the  public  mouth  than  ever; 
and  as  the  year  closed,  Brienne  and  all  Brienne  stood  for, 
bethought  them  of  some  wide  action  that  should  remove  all 
this  friction  and  leave  government  secure. 

That  action  had  the  Queen  for  its  authoress.  It  was  an 
attempt  at  despotic  reform  without  representation,  an 
Austrian  model,  and  it  was  named  "The  New  Order." 

No  year  in  Marie  Antoinette's  life  had  more  affected  her 
experience,  her  character,  and  her  position  in  the  State  than 
this  of  1787,  her  thirty-second,  which  now  drew  to  an  end. 
She  had  made  a  Ministry;  she  had  influenced,  supported,  in 
part  createeU-a  policy;  she  had  reaped  the  full  harvest  of 
pain  in  the  first  death  of  a  child,  in  the  growing  illness  of 
her  eldest  son,  in  the  flood  of  calumny  which  had  succeeded 
the  La  Motte's  escape  from  prison.  She  had  come  rapidly 
to  actual  power,  she  was  exercising  it  with  facility  —  and 
every  act  of  hers  led  more  nearly  and  more  directly  to  the 
^cataclysm  before  her. 

The  public  hatred  of  her  had  immensely  grown  —  in  inten- 
/  sity,  in  volume,  but  especially  in  quality,  since  she  had 
/  .manifestly  become  the  chief  adviser^of  her  husband  and  jhe 
creator^iLa-Scheme  oL  government .  The  Polignacs,  as  I 
have  said,  had  joined  the  enemy.  Orleans  was  now  defi- 
nitely the  head  of  her  bitter  opponents.  The  drawing-rooms 
of  Paris  had  joined  the  populace  against  her.  It  had  been 
actually  proposed  to  mock  her  effigy  during  the  rejoicing  at 


THE  NOTABLES  257 

the  return  of  the  Parlement  from  exile.  The  wits  had 
renewed  their  nicknames:  she  was  "Madame  Deficit"  as 
well  as  "the  Austrian"  she  had  always  been  —  and  by  the 
winter  all  the  quarrel  in  which  the  Parlement,  the  crowd, 
and  nearly  every  permanent  force  were  now  ranged  against 
the  Crown,  saw  in  her  the  core  of  the  resistance  and  the 
personal  object  of  attack. 

The  year  1788  at  its  very  opening  showed  clearly  how  far 
the  development  had  gone.     That  system  of  "  a  new  order" 
-  a   powerful,   uncriticised   Crown,  thorough   reform,  the 
negation   of  ideas  —  saw,  risen  up  against  such  feminine 
and    practical    conceptions,   those    much   stronger   things, 
dogmas.     The  civic  religion  of  the  French  and  the  creed  of  x 
the  era  they  were   framing   emerged.     Before  Easter  the  ' 
Parlement  had  denied  the  right  of  the  executive  to  imprison\ 
at  will,  as  also  the  right  of  the  Prince  to  assimilate  his  edict! 
to  a  public  law,  and  had  demanded  the  complete  freedom! 
of  the  three  lawyers  who  had  been  arrested.     But  —  an  \ 
ominous  thing  —  the  Parlement  claimed  no  privileges.     It/ 
demanded  the  release  of  its  members   as  citizens   and  of 
human  right  against  the  arbitrary  power  of  the  Crown. 

Against  such  a  force  as  this  —  a  creed  —  the  only  weapon 
that  "The  New  Order"  and  the  Queen  could  imagine  was  a 
reform  of  machinery.  In  this,  as  in  so  much  else  during  the 
furious  struggle  of  those  eighteen  months,  "The  New  Order" 
fore-planned  much  that  the  Revolution  itself  was  to  achieve  : 
it  was  modern,  it  was  suited  to  circumstance,  but  lacking 
first  principles  it  was  apparent  and  direct,  but  lacking 
nationality  and  being  opposed  to  the  summoning  of  the 
States  -General  it  was  doomed.  The  scheme  of  "The  New 


Order"  included  a  igplacing  of  all  this  antique,  corporate, 
and  privjlp^pjjfvwpf  ^  f|ip  Paglomont  by-a  High  Court 


258  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

more  fully  reflecting  the  governing  classes  of  the  nation. 
It  was  not  unwise,  and  Marie  Antoinette  —  to  judge  again 
from  her  correspondence  and  from  the  universal  opinion  of 
contemporaries  —  was  largely  its  originator  and  wholly  its 
ally.  IJL  miserably  failed. 

The  secret  plan  of  it  —  surrounded  with  fantastic  pre- 
cautions —  was  divulged.     The  threatened  Parlement  (and 
it  had  the  whole  nation  behind  it)  met  at  once,  and  D'Epres- 
menil  explained  the  peril,  and  declared  once  more,  but  far 
more  directly  than  before,  for  the  principles  upon  which  the 
Revolution  was  to  turn,  and  especially  the  right  of  the  States- 
General  alone  —  regularly  and  periodically  summoned  —  to 
grant  supply.     The  arrests  that  followed  —  arrests  which  the 
Queen  called  with  quite  singular  blindness  <<acts_nLrigp_ur" 
-  perilous   as  she  saw,  but  necessary  as  she  imagined  - 
were  the  signal  for  an  approach  to  civil  war. 
Order"  jwas  resisted  forcibly  in  J 


by  the  privileged,  by  custom,  by  the  populace  (who  feared 
new  taxes),  by  local  patriotism  which  feared  the  loss  of  local 
character  and  (what  indeed  so  soon  did  come)  the  merging 
of  all  in  one  homogeneous  State.  All  the  troops  were  out; 
revolt 


In  June,  1788,  the  Clergy  —  summoned  to  meet  and  grant 
an  aid  as  a  last  desperate  resource  for  means  —  replied  by 
an  assertion  in  turn  of  their  immutable  custom  and  peculiar 
right.  In  July  "The  New  Order"  broke  down.  The  de- 
mand for  the  States-Geneial  was  acceded  to  by  the  Crown 
and  by  the  Queen.  On  the  8th  of  August,  1788,  they  were 
definitely  summoned  for  the  May  Day  of  the  following  year. 


XI 
THE  BASTILLE 

AUGUST  8,  1788,  TO  SEPTEMBER  30.  1789 

THE  decision  was  taken.     France  was  alive  with  the 
advent  of  the    States-General.     The   autumn  of 
1788  had  come.     Fersen  was  with  the  Queen. 
It  was  more  than  fourteen  years  since,  a  boy  of  eighteen, 
Northern,  dignified,  and  grave,  his  large  and  steady  brown 
eyes  had  met  hers  from  far  off  among  the  hundreds  in  the 
Masked  Ball  at  the  Opera.    He  was  then  a  child.    She  also 
was  a  child,  pure,  exiled,  of  an  active  timidity,  and  not  yet 
even  Queen.    I  have  written  what  happened  then:  the  rare 
occasions  on  which  he  had  come  and  gone.     Now  he  was 
here  with  her  at  Versailles. 

The  something  permanent  which  every  human  life  has 
known  had  entered  in  that  moment  of  her  girlhood  and 
settled  finally  within  her  heart.  The  accidents  of  living  did 
little  to  disturb  so  silent  and  so  secure  a  thing.  He  had  been 
but  a  chance  visitor  to  Paris  —  a  Swedish  lad  on  his  Grand 
Tour  —  when  they  had  thus  met  for  ever;  during  the  critical 
t  first  three  years  of  her  reign  he  had  been  away  in  his  own 
country.  He  had  returned,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  summer 
of  1778.  The  worst  of  her  torments  was  settled  then:  she 
was  to  be  a  mother;  she  might  expect  an  heir  to  the  throne; 
the  adventure,  the  successful  adventure,  of  America  had 
begun.  A  position  of  womanhood  and  of  rule,  such  dignities 
and  such  repose,  might  have  paled  or  rendered  ridiculous 

259 


260  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  chance  passion  of  extreme  youth:  they  did  neither. 
Whether  he  came  or  went,  his  quiet  image  —  the  one  fixed 
thing  she  had  known  in  a  world  she  could  not  know  — 
remained.  He  had  been  received  at  once  right  into  the 
tiny  inner  circle  of  the  Polignacs  before  he  left  for  the 
American  War.  He  had  been  with  the  Queen  continually, 
reserved  and  of  that  breeding  which  she  longed  for,  the 
unpassionate  poise  of  the  North.  Her  child,  her  husband's 
child,  was  born;  '79  and  its  war  news  came,  and  Fersen 
had  resolved  at  last  to  go.  He  also  by  that  time,  as  has 
been  read,  knew  what  had  entered  his  life. 

The  Queen,  as  he  inhabited  the  halls  of  Versailles  during 
his  farewells,  had  followed  him  with  her  eyes,  and  very  often 
they  had  filled  with  tears.  All  the  world  saw  the  thing. 
He  had  gone  off  at  last  to  America,  to  wonder  at  the  swamps 
and  the  bare  landscape,  the  odd  shuffling  fighting  and  the 
drag  of  an  informal  war.  His  English  gave  him  work  enough 
interpreting  between  his  own  French  Generals  and  Wash- 
ington; he  wrote  home  from  time  to  time  to  his  father,  he 
busied  himself  in  learning  his  military  trade  —  but  of  Ver- 
sailles or  to  Versailles  there  was  not  a  word.  During  all  the 
three  years,  '80-'83,  that  he  suffered  the  new  countries,  the 
Queen  and  he  heard  nothing  the  one  of  the  other. 

He  had  returned  to  Europe;  but  it  was  only  the  journey  of 
his  sovereign  Gustavus  that  kept  him  some  months  in 
France,  though  a  colonelcy,  more  or  less  honorary,  and  a 
pension  of  some  hundreds  had  been  given  the  young  man 
there.  A  wealthy  marriage,  long  arranged  in  England  for 
him,  he  let  slip  without  concern.  The  proposal  (a  year 
before  the  affair  of  the  necklace)  that  he  should  marry 
Necker's  ugly  daughter,  he  resigned  at  once  in  favour  of  his 
friend,  young  Stael,  his  sovereign's  ambassador.  With  a 


THE  BASTILLE  261 

commission  in  Sweden  as  well  as  in  France,  it  was  his  own 
country  he  preferred.  His  moments  at  Versailles  were  rare, 
his  visits  very  brief  —  such  as  that  in  which  he  saw  the  Not- 
ables dissolved  (of  which  scene  he  records  his  judgment) ;  in 
none  did  he  more  than  appear,  silent,  for  a  very  few  hours 
or  days  at  Versailles.  The  girl  who  had  met  him,  a  boy,  in 
'74,  was  now  a  woman  of  thirty  and  more:  chance  glimpses 
alone  had  lit  up  the  very  long  space  of  those  years :  she  had 
suffered  all  the  business  of  the  necklace,  all  the  rising  hatred 
of  Paris,  without  any  too  close  a  word  from  him;  she  was 
entering  the  Revolution  and  the  way  to  death  when  he 
reappeared:  henceforward  he  did  not  leave  her. 

That  bond,  which  time  had  neither  increased  nor  dimin- 
ished and  which  permanent  absence  and  silence  had  left 
unfalsified,  now  became  a  living  communion  between  them. 
He  was  never  what  is  called  her  "lover" ;  the  whole  sequence  * 
is  that  of  a  devotion  as  in  a  tale  or  a  song,  and  yet  burning 
in  living  beings:  a  thing  to  the  French  incomprehensible, 
to  men  of  other  countries,  to  Englishmen,  for  instance, 
comprehensible  enough  —  but,  whether  comprehensible  or 
not,  as  rare  as  epic  genius. 


Brienrie  had  fallen:  the  Queen,  and  the  Queen  alone, 
had  put  back  Necker  in  his  place.  Why  had  she  done  this  ? 
From  a  desire  to  rule,  and  an  opportunity  for  it. 

There  are  those  who  discover  in  themselves  the  capacity 
to  govern,  that  is  to  organise  the  wills  of  men.  Often  great 
soldiers  find  this  in  themselves,  and  are  led  to  govern  a 
whole  state  at  last:  such  as  Napoleon. 

There  are  others  to  whom  cheating,  intrigue  and  cunning 
are  native:  such  are,  at  bottom,  however  high  their  station, 


262  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  slaves,  not  the  dictators  or  the  helpers,  of  their  fellow- 
beings;  they  have  a  keen  nose  for  the  herd ;  they  will  always 
follow  it,  and  it  is  their  ambition  to  fill  posts  where  they  can 
give  favours  and  draw  large  salaries.  Of  this  sort  are  par- 
liamentary politicians  to-day:  from  such  we  draw  our 
ministers.  They  have  of  poor  human  nature  an  expert 
knowledge  such  as  usurers  have  and  panderers;  they  are, 
therefore,  not  unsuited  to  choose  permanent  officials  or  to 
recommend  to  others  places  of  trust  and  power. 

There  is  a  third  kind,  and  to  this  third  kind  Marie  Antoi- 
nette belonged  —  as  many  another  woman  and  feminine  man 
has  belonged.  It  neither  organises  nor  intrigues;  it  desires 
to  do  neither,  and  is  incapable  of  both.  All  it  desires  is  to 
be  able  to  say  "  I  govern,"  The  accident  of  the  last  two  years 
had  permitted  her  to  say  this  —  but,  having  said  it,  she  could 
say  nothing  more.  She  knew  the  outcry  against  Calonne: 
she  undid  him.  She  knew  the  reputation  of  Brienne:  she 
made  him.  She  saw  Brienne  most  evidently  out  of  favour 
with  opinion;  she  unmade  him.  She  heard  shouts  for 
Necker  —  and  Necker  was  summoned  to  her  little  room,  was 
regally  examined,  graciously  received  and  installed. 

Those  who  can  govern  through  a  period  of  peril,  that  is, 
those  who  can  organise  the  wills  of  men  during  the  short  and 
indeterminate  time  before  any  resultant  of  clashing  social 
forces  has  yet  appeared,  note,  decide,  order,  speak,  and  do 
—  and  when  it  is  too  late  to  act,  their  genius  tells  them  that 
it  is  too  late.  In  the  early  winter  of  1788  it  was  not  yet 
too  late.  What  would  one  possessed  of  the  power  of  govern- 
ment have  done  ?  In  the  first  place,  such  an  one  would 
have  stated  the  evil  publicly  in  detail  and  with  authority; 
in  the  next,  chosen  not  one  but  a  body  of  men  to  deal  with 
particular  difficulties  (as,  for  instance,  a  particular  legiste, 


THE  BASTILLE  2G15 

for  the  troubles  of  that  absurdity,  the  Common  Law;  a  par- 
ticular soldier  to  suggest  a  reform  of  the  army,  &c.  ;  in  the 
third,  used  as  allies  all  the  positive  forces  available,  all  the 
enthusiasms,  all  the  tide  —  to  this  force  (by  persuasion)  how 
much  may  not  be  harnessed?  So  Mirabeau  would  have 
done;  so  Napoleon  did;  so  some  ready  eye  in  1788  might 
have  planned.  The  States-General  is  the  fever  ?  You  shall 
have  it:  in  Paris,  with  splendour.  The  Commons  are  the 
cry  ?  They  shall  be  in  full  double  number  and  with  special 
new  powers  —  a  new  dress,  perhaps,  as  well.  The  nation 
is  crying  out  for  Government  ?  Give  them  the  Crown  :  the 
King  on  horseback  day  after  day. 

Had  some  such  judgment  controlled  thai, 


would  haye^  preserved  the  Monarchy,  old  institutions  clothed 
in  their  old  names  would  have  been  squeezed  and  fitted  into 
new  moulds:  France  so  changing,  there  would  have  been 
some  change  in  Europe  —  an  episode  well  worthy  of  memory 
and  noted  by  special  historians.  The  Bishops  of  the  Church 
in  France  would  —  to-day  —  have  been  what  Rohan  and 
Narbonne  were  then;  the  Faith,  already  derelict,  would  by 
this  time  very  probably  have  descended  to  be  a  ritual  for 
wealthy  women  or  an  opinion  for  a  few  valueless,  weak  men: 
that  self-praise  and  that  divorce  from  reality  which  is  the 
mark  of  our  backwaters  in  Europe  and  of  our  new  countries 
everywhere  would  (perhaps)  have  settled  in  the  succeeding 
century  upon  all  Europe,  and,  for  the  first  time  in  its  long 
history,  our  civilisation  would  have  missed  one  of  its  due  J  ) 
resurrections.  As  it  was,  God  intended  the  Revolution,.  »  » 
Therefore,  every  error  and  insufficiency  in  those  directing  \ 
its  inception  was  permitted,  and  therefore,  on  account  of 
such  insufficiency,  the  full  force  of  a  military  people  ran 
freely,  as  run  natural  things,  and  achieved  what  we  know. 


264  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

The  Queen  had  nominated  Necker  from  a  mere  desire  to 
rule,  and  had  therefore  simply  chosen  the  man  most  loudly 
called  for.  Necker,  on  his  side,  was  well  worthy  of  so  facile 
a  judgment;  he  was  all  that  is  meant  by  Geneva. 

By  his  own  standards,  which  were  those  of  a  company 
promoter,  he  was  just  barely  honest  —  by  those  of  chivalric 
honour  he  was  deplorably  tainted.  Full  of  avarice,  order  and 
caution,  a  very  Huguenot,  he  sought  everywhere  an  eco- 
nomic solution  for  political  problems ;  unsoldierly,  of  course, 
and  in  the  presence  of  danger  worthless,  he  was  none  the 
less  patient  in  detail  and  of  a  persevering  kind ;  very  vacil- 
lating in  the  presence  of  fierce  and  conflicting  desires  around 
him,  he  was  yet  tenacious  of  a  general  plan.  To  all  these 
characters  he  added  that  kind  of  ambition  which  is  avid  of 
popularity  on  condition  that  it  shall  face  no  bodily  risk  and 
that  it  shall  labour  in  words  or  on  paper  only.  He  had  his 
reward:  his  insignificant  figure  was  for  a  year  the  symbol 
of  all  the  great  ferment;  his  presence  with,  or  absence  from, 
the  Council  was  the  test  of  advance  or  of  retreat  in  the 
revolutionary  movement.  So  for  one  year  —  then  for  a  few 
months  he  is  forgotten;  then  he  hears  a  mob  in  the  street, 
and  flies. 

With  such  a  man  as  figurehead  it  is  not  difficult  to  judge 
the  obvious  development  of  the  autumn  and  winter  which 
produced  the  first  great  Parliament.  Opinion  was  invited : 
the  pamphlets  poured  in.  On  matters  already  fixed  in  public 
opinion  Necker  could  be  decisive,  as,  for  instance,  that 
the  Commons  in  the  approaching  Assembly  should  be  as 
numerous  as  the  clergy  and  the  nobles  combined  —  for  this 
was  the  universal  rule  in  provincial  parliaments;  but  when 
(two  days  after  Christmas)  this  point  (which  had  afforded 
food  for  violent  writing  but  was  in  reality  certain  to  be 


THE  BASTILLE  265 

conceded)  —  when,  I  say,  this  point  was  fixed  by  King 
and  Queen  and  Council,  Necker  so  drafted  the  decision  as 
to  make  it  appear  all  his  own  to  the  populace:  while  at 
Court  the  angry  higher  nobility  said  it  was  all  the  Queen's. 
A  far  more  decisive  matter  —  and  one  that  escaped  the  parti- 
sans —  was  whether  the  Nobles,  Clergy,  and  Commons 
should  sit  and  vote  together,  as  the  necessity  for  a  Popular 
Will  —  for  one  voice  —  demanded,  or  should  play  the 
antique  fool  and,  in  a  crisis  so  actual  and  vivid,  solemnly 
vote  separately,  checking  each  other's  decisions,  nullifying 
the  public  mandate  —  all  for  the  sake  of  custom.  Here 
Necker  could  have  decided  and  changed  history:  but  there 
was  not  an  opinion  sufficiently  unanimous  to  guide  him  in 
his  nullity.  He  left  that  essential  piece  of  procedure  to  be 
settled  by  the  Estates  themselves  when  they  should  have 
met ;  he  thus  (as  will  be  seen)  made  of  the  firsl.  and  most 
necessary  act  of  the  States-General,  the  insistence  of  the 
Commons  that  all  should  vote  together,  an  illegal  thing  — 
and  so  coloured  all  their  succeeding  action  with  the  colour  of 
rebellion.  One  thing  Necker  had  done  of  his  own  judg- 
ment, and  it  was  idiotic.  He  had  summoned  the  Notables 
again  for  a  month  in  the  autumn  —  he  was  soon  glad  to  be 
rid  of  that  folly :  the  decree  I  have  mentioned  followed,  and 
in  February,  1789  —  legally  before  the  end  of  January  — 
the  elections  to  the  States-General  began. 

No  such  complete  representation  of  a  great  nation  has 
been  attempted  since  that  day;  no  such  experiment  could  be 
attempted  save  with  political  energy  at  white  heat  and  under 
the  urgent  necessity  of  a  secular  charge.  The  confused  noise 
which  filled  the  rising  spring  of  '89  was,  for  once,  the  voice  of 
ALL;  thousands  upon  thousands  of  little  primary  assemblies, 
of  advisory  letters,  of  plaints,  of  legal  suggestions,  of  strict 


266  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


orders  and  mandates  to  the  elected  (without  which  no  politi- 
cal freedom  can  exist)  of  corporate  actions  by  guilds,  by 
townships,  by  chapters,  by  every  form  of  political  personality, 
filled  and  augmented  the  life  of  France.  So  vast  was  the 
thing  that  to  this  day,  amid  the  libraries  of  monographs  that 
seem  to  exhaust  the  Revolution,  all  have  shrunk  from  the 
delineation  of  this  rising  ocean  of  men.  There  is  no  final 
work  upon  the  elections  of  '89.  No  one  has  dared. 

April  passed.  The  deputies  began  to  stream  into  Paris. 
Paris,  the  last  days  of  that  month  and  the  first  of  the  next, 
began  to  overflow  into  the  royal  town  at  its  gates.  Sunday, 
the  3rd  of  May,  saw  one  long  procession  of  every  kind  and 
fortune  pouring,  in  spite  of  the  drenching  weather,  from  the 
capital  up  into  the  hills  of  Versailles.  Upon  the  morrow 
the  opening  religious  ceremony  of  the  Session  was  to  be  held. 


At  about  six  o'clock  of  the  morning  of  Monday,  the  4th 
of  May,  it  was  still  raining  —  not  violently,  but  still  raining; 
the  dawn  struggled  in  wet  clouds  over  the  woods  and  the 
plain  of  Paris  beyond,  and  the  pavements  of  Versailles  were 
shining  flat  under  the  new  day,  with  large  puddles  in  their 
worn  places.  As  the  light  broadened  the  rain  ceased.  The 
uniform  and  dull  low  sky  began  to  break  and  gather:  the 
innumerable  crowd  moved.  Some  thousands  were  sodden 
after  a  night  spent  out  of  doors;  many  thousands  more, 
moving  from  their  packed  rooms,  where  a  bed  was  a  guinea 
and  the  mere  shelter  of  a  roof  a  well-let  thing,  began  to 
crowd  the  pavements,  the  roofs,  the  cornices;  as  for  the 
windows,  every  window  had  its  bouquet  of  heads  at  high 
price,  well-dressed  heads  and  eager.  The  morning  rose 
and  grew  warm. 


THE  BASTILLE  267 

The  palace  of  Versailles  looks  east  and  north  down  towards 
the  woods  that  hide  Paris;  it  looks  down  three  broad, 
divergent  avenues  spreading  like  the  fingers  of  a  hand,  and 
starting  (as  from  the  palm  of  such  a  hand)  from  a  wide  space 
called  the  "Place  d'Arnaes,"  which  forms  a  huger  outer 
court,  as  it  were,  to  the  huge  Court  of  the  Kings.  To  the 
right  and  to  the  left  of  this  main  square  and  its  avenues,  as 
you  look  from  the  palace,  lie  the  two  halves  of  the  town: 
the  northern,  to  the  left,  has  for  its  principal  church  Notre 
Dame;  the  southern,  to  the  right, has  for  its  principal  church 
St.  Louis,  which  is  now  the  Cathedral;  each  building  is  by 
situation  and  plan  the  centre  of  its  quarter.  The  way  from 
Notre  Dame  to  St.  Louis  is  up  the  Rue  Dauphin,  across  the 
great  Place  d'Armes  and  then  down  the  Rue  Saborg  — all  in 
a  straight  line  not  half  a  mile  long,  with  the  great  Place  tak- 
ing up  more  than  the  middle  third.  From  the  one  church 
to  the  other  was  the  processional  way  of  Versailles;  it  was 
chosen  for  that  day.  From  seven  onwards  the  Parlement 
had  been  gathering  in  Notre  Dame;  not  till  ten  did  the  royal 
carriages  arrive,  all  plumed  and  gilded,  swung  low  and 
ridiculous :  the  King  and  his  household,  the  Queen  and  hers; 
the  Princes  of  the  Blood  --  but  as  for  Orleans  he  was  already 
with  the  lords  in  the  Church,  disdaining  his  rank  and 
making  a  show  of  humility.  They  all  set  out  in  procession 
for  St.  Louis,  the  clergy  of  Versailles  in  a  small  surpliced 
body  leading,  the  dark  Commons  next,  the  embroidered  and 
feathered  Nobility,  the  Priests,  the  Household,  the  music, 
the  Bishop;  then  the  Blessed  Sacrament  in  the  Archbishop 
of  Paris'  hands,  with  Monsieur  and  his  brother  and  two 
more  of  the  Blood  at  the  corners  of  the  canopy;  last  of  all 
the  Queen  and  her  ladies  — all  in  the  order  I  have  named; 
two  thousand  and  more  four-front,  the  length  of  a  brigade  — 


268  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

and  every  one  of  them  (save  the  Archbishop  who  held  the 
Monstrance)  with  a  blessed  candle  in  his  or  her  hand.  By 
the  time  the  head  of  the  line  was  at  St.  Louis,  the  tail  had 
hardly  left  Notre  Dame,1  and  as  each  detachment  took  the 
line,  young  Dreux  Breze,  Master  of  Ceremonies,  on  foot 
since  seven,  ordered  them. 

The  myriads  of  people  saw  them  go  by.  The  sun  was 
shining  at  last:  all  could  be  seen,  yet  the  cheers  were  pointed 
and  full  of  meaning;  the  silence  also  was  full  of  meaning. 
They  cheered  the  Commons  as  those  six  hundred  went  by, 
in  black  without  swords  —  all  in  black  save  for  a  Breton 
amongst  them.  Some  curiously  picked  out  Mirabeau;  they 
were  silent  at  the  lords'  blaze  of  colour,  half-cheering  only 
Orleans,  his  face  such  a  picture!  the  sacred  candle  flickering 
in  his  hands;  they  did  not  (as  would  a  modern  crowd)  all 
uncover  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament;  they  cheered  the  King. 
Then,  as  the  Queen  passed,  there  passed  with  her  a  belt  of 
silence.  As  she  went  slowly  with  her  ladies  along  that  way 
silence  went  with  her;  cheering  went  before  and  after. 
At  one  place  only  was  that  silence  broken,  where  a  group  of 
rough  women  suddenly  shouted  out,  as  she  passed,  insulting  •- 
vivats  for  Orleans:  it  may  be  that  she  stumbled  when  she 
heard  them. 

From  the  advanced  colonnade  of  the  great  stables 
(where  the  sappers  are  lodged  to-day),  upon  the  roof 
of  the  colonnade,  there  was  a  truckle-bed  and  many 
cushions  laid,  and  on  it  was  lying  the  broken  body  of 
her  son,  the  Dauphin,  who  would  not  inherit  all  these 
things:  he  was  very  visibly  dying.  His  miserable  little 
frame,  all  bent  and  careless,  lay  there  at  its  poor  ease. 

His  listless  and  veiled  eyes  watched  the  procession  go  by. 

1  Carlyle,  of  course,  puts  one  church  for  the  other,  and  makes  the  procession  walk  wrong  way  about.    The 
Cambridge  History,  however,  is  accurate  in  this  detail. 


THE   BASTILLE  2G9 

It  is  said  that  his  mother,  in  that  half-mile  of  ordeal, 
glanced  up  to  where  he  lay,  and  smiled. 

The  sun  still  shone  upon  the  double  row  of  soldiers  —  the 
blue  of  the  Gardes  Fran9aises  upon  this  side,  the  Red  of 
the  Swiss  upon  that;  the  crowd  was  in  gaiety  -  -  the 
wet  were  now  dry;  the  last  of  the  line  were  now  gone 
and  the  doors  of  St.  Louis  had  closed  on  them.  It  had 
been  a  great  show,  and  all  the  place  and  its  pleasures 
were  open  to  the  people.  Next  day  the  Session  was 
opened  in  that  same  hall  which  had  been  raised  two  years 
before  for  the  Notables. 

A  member  of  the  Commons,  sitting  in  the  back  row  of  his 
order,  would  have  seen  before  him,  rank  upon  rank,  the 
dense  mass  of  black  uniform  menace  which  his  six  hundred 
presented,  half  filling  the  floor  of  the  great  oblong  hall; 
to  left  of  him,  against  a  row  of  columns,  the  clergy  of  every 
rank;  to  the  right  against  the  opposite  row  of  columns, 
the  blaze  of  the  Nobles  —  among  them  Orleans,  his  face 
insolently  set  towards  the  Throne.  Far  above  and  beyond 
them  all,  at  the  end  of  the  hall,  like  an  altar  raised  upon  its 
steps,  was  the  last  splendour  of  the  Throne.  The  golden 
threads  of  the  lilies  shone  upon  the  vast  canopy  of  purple 
velvet  that  over-shadowed  it;  seated  upon  it,  alone  above  his 
kingdom,  the  last  of  the  kings  possessed  a  great  majesty, 
in  which  the  known  hesitation  of  his  gait,  the  known  lethargic 
character  of  his  person,  were  swallowed  up  in  awe:  an 
enormous  diamond  gleamed  in  the  feather  of  his  hat.  Below 
and  around  him  were  grouped  the  Princes  of  the  Blood  and 
the  great  officers  of  State,  and  in  front  of  the  group  in  a 
long  line  sat  the  Ministry.  Necker  among  these  —  the  only 
one  dressed  as  the  Commons  were  dressed  —  appealed  to 
the  Commons,  while  at  the  foot  of  the  throne,  in  purple  and 


270  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

silver  white,  a  little  diamond  circlet  and  a  heron's  feather 
in  her  hair,  stood  the  Queen. 

This  the  Commons  could  see,  under  the  light  that  fell 
from  high  windows  near  the  roof;  it  fell  over  two  thousand 
of  the  public  — guests  chosen  rather  than  a  true  public; 
they  filled  the  galleries  above,  they  swarmed  in  the  dark 
aisle  beneath,  undivided  from  the  three  orders  —  a  famili- 
arity shocking  to  our  historians  who,  craning  their  necks, 
have  watched  as  a  privilege  and  with  respect  the  fag-end  of 
the  House  of  Commons  or  the  County  Council  from  a  pen. 
To  the  command  of  Dreux  Breze,  all  that  great  hall  rose: 
the  King  rose  also,  read  his  short  speech  in  a  firm  voice, 
and  put  on  his  hat  to  sit  down.  The  Nobles  covered 
themselves  at  the  King's  gesture:  among  the  Commons 
there  was  confusion  -  -  they  did  not  know  the  etiquette,  or 
rather,  some  did,  some  did  not.  The  incident  was  insigni- 
ficant and  comic :  a  graver  thing  followed  it.  Barentin_rose, 
the  Keeper  of  the  Seals:  he  spoke  for  an  hour.  Had  he 
spoken  for  three  minutes  and  spoken  but  one  sentence  it 
would  have  been  all  he  had  to  do,  for  he  was  there  to  tell 
Jthem  that  it  was  left  to  the  Three  Orders  to  sit  separate  or 
II  together  as  they  might  choose.  All  the  Revolution  was  latent 
in  that  order. 

The  Nobles  would  vote  to  sit  separate ;  possibly  the  clergy : 
the  "National  Assembly"  -  as  all  thought  of  it,  as  all  called 
it — would  be  turned  into  a  "Lords  and  Commons"  —an 
absurd,  complicated  and  do-nothing  machine  with  privileges 
and  customs,  quaintnesses  and  long  accommodations  be- 
tween this  house  and  that;  it  would  lose  touch  with  the 
general ,*»  the  sap  of  national  life  would  be  cut  off  from  it; 
it  would  not  be  able  to  create;  it  would  be  the  jest  of  that 
which  really  governed.  As  in  England  to-day  our  various 


THE  BASTILLE  271 

elected  bodies  are  the  jests  of  the  plutocracy,  so  in  1789  the 
"National  Assembly,"  tripartite,  played  upon  by  vanity  and 
ignorance,  would  have  become  the  jest  of  the  Crown.  But 
in  France  an  institution,  once  unreal,  disappears,  and  before 
July  the  Assembly  was,  according  to  this  plan,  to  disappear. 
It  was  deliberately  conceived  as  a  means  of  nullifying  and. 
destroying  the  Parlement. 

[eckgr  spoke  next.  He  spoke  for  three  hours,  and  was 
listened  to  throughout,  for  he  dealt  with  finance.  His 
speech  was  full  of  lies  — but  his  name  had  not  yet  lost  the 
titular  place  of  idolatry.  When  he  had  ended  his  Genevese 
falsehoods,  the  ceremony  was  over  and  all  were  free  to  dine. 
But  with  Barentin's  words  the  Revolution  had  begun. 

All  May  Gaul  worked  and  seethed.  The  instinct  of 
numbers  aimed  straight  for  the  objective  upon  which  all 
turned,  and  the  Commons  demanded  the  accession  to  one 
corporate  Assembly  o£  the  Nobles  and  Clergy.  They  nego- 
tiated with  the  privileged  houses ;  they  affirmed  the  principle 
of  combined  voting:  Necker  sent  for  soldiers.  By  the  end 
of  the  month  the  last  attempt  at  some  voluntary  arrange- 
ment had  failed.  Meanwhile  the  King,  by  some  lethargy  or 
through  the  intrigue  of  some  cabal,  had  not  yet  formally 
received  a  deputation  of  the  Commons. 

What  did  the  Queen  make  of  that  May  ?  The  days  seemed 
to  her  first  an  ugly  rumour  throughout  Versailles,  buzzing 
round  the  palace  —  soon  an  uproar.  She  stood  with  the  few 
that  actively  maintained  privilege  against  the  Commons; 
but,  a  trifle  wiser  than  they,  she  brought  in  their  counsels 
in  a  moderate  form  to  the  King.  It  was  not  enough:  the 
troops  still  came  into  Paris  —  Gaul  still  rose  higher  and 
higher;  and  through  the  tumult  something  much  more  to 
her,  more  intimate,  infinitely  more  acute  and  true,  ran  and 


MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

held  her  as  a  physical  pain  will  pin  the  mind  and  hold  it  dur- 
ing the  playing  of  some  loud  and  meaningless  music:  it 
was  the  dying  of  her  little  son;  he  lay  at  Meudon  dying. 

The  end  of  the  French  Monarchy  was  mirrored  in  the 
fate  of  the  last  bodily  forms  that  were  to  contain  its  Idea. 
The  Bourbon  heirs,  one  after  another,  died  before  succession. 
Louis  XV.,  a  great  grandson,  himself  delicate  from  birth,  was 
succeeded  by  a  grandson  again,  a  boy  painfully  saved  by  the 
doctors  —  a  man  throughout  life  partially  infirm.  The 
line  had  come  at  last  to  this  child,  the  Dauphin,  whose 
advent  had  been  the  opportunity  for  such  strong  joy  through- 
out the  country  and  in  whom  the  New  Age  was  to  find  its 
first  King.  All  the  phases  of  doom  had  shown  themselves: 
first,  the  high  promise,  then  the  vague  doubts,  the  mysteries 
of  a  general  disease ;  lastly  the  despairs.  For  a  month,  ever 
since  the  opening  of  the  States-General,  which  he  had  lan- 
guidly witnessed,  it  had  been  but  a  question  of  the  day  on 
which  the  boy  would  die.  That  day  had  come. 

It  was  on  the  3rd  of  June,  at  Meudon.  The  King  and 
the  Queen  had  come  in  answer  to  sudden  and  graver  news 
of  their  child;  they  reached  the  place  in  the  early  afternoon 
-  and  they  were  implored  to  return.  The  boy  was  within, 
at  his  agony.  The  King  sank  into  a  chair  and  cried  that  his 
son  was  dead,  and  the  poor  lad's  mother,  suddenly  broken 
in  the  midst  of  so  many  and  such  great  public  alarms,  of 
her  government,  her  resistance  and  her  perils,  suddenly  knelt 
down  and  cried  wildly,  rocking  her  head  in  her  hands,  bury- 
ing her  face  on  Louis'  knees:  she  called  out  to  God.  They 
were  left  thus  together,  and  at  one  the  next  morning  the 
Dauphin  was  dead. 

It  was  as  though  two  majesties  or  angels  challenged  each 
other  in  those  days:  the  majesty  which  reigns  inwardly  and 


THE   BASTILLE  273 

which  everywhere  makes  of  a  son's  death  the  supreme 
agony  of  the  world,  though  sons  die  hourly;  the  majesty 
which  reigns  outwardly  and  which  commands,  once  in  a 
thousand  years,  the  passing  of  societies  and  kingdoms.  For 
while  this  death  was  doing  at  Meudon,  in  the  Commonwealth 
the  last  decisions  also  were  at  hand.  Two  days  after  the 
sad  procession  of  ranks  and  delegates  had  done  honour  to 
the  dead  child,  the  Commons  summoned  for  the  last  time 
the  Clergy  and  the  Lords  to  join  them  and  form  one  body 
to  mirror  the  nation.  It  was  but  three  days  after  the  little 
body  had  been  taken  to  lie  at  St.  Denis  among  the  Kings, 
that  the  next  step  was  taken.  The  Revolution  broke  with 
law  —  it  now  first  began  to  be  the  Revolution  and  to  do. 
The  Commons  declared  themselves  to  be  no  longer  the 
"Commons,"  but  —  with  all  of  the  privileged  orders  who 
would  join  them  —  they  declared  themselves  to  be  the 
"National  Assembly":  those  who  would  not  join  them 
were  no  part  of  the  body  which  was  to  remake  the  world: 
their  legality  was  not  to  avail  them:  the  Commons  had 
"made  act  of  sovereignty,"  and  the  strain  between  two 
centres  of  authority,  the  Crown  and  the  Representatives 
had  begun. 

It  was  this  that  the  Queen  must  watch  and  parry  and 
try  to  understand,  now,  when  the  first  part  of  her  flesh  had 
gone  down  into  the  grave,  and  her  brain,  shaken  with 
despairs,  must  attempt  to  control  and  to  comprehend  the 
wave;  and  her  eyes,  weary  of  weeping,  to  read  orders,  to  note 
faces,  and  her  voice,  with  which  she  could  not  longer  call 
her  son,  to  command.  She  was  in  the  centre  of  the  resist- 
ance for  a  month,  and  it  failed. 

For  a  few  days,  in  spite  of  the  call  for  troops  which  had 
been  heard  —  and  the  troops  were  coming  —  for  a  few  days 


274  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

more,  speech  was  still  formidable  and  every  phase  of  the 
debate  ringing  through  the  great  shed  of  the  Menus  was  a 
further  affirmation  of  the  new  and  violent  sovereignty  of 
those  usurpers,  the  Assembly.  In  twenty-four  hours  a 
decision  was  taken  by  the  Crown. 

To  the  assumption  of/ sovereignty  by  the  Commons  the 
Court  replied.  There  was  to  be  a  Royal  Session  on  the 
Monday  following,  the  King  present,  and  all  the  division 
between  the  orders  settled  by  his  final  voice  —  as  to  the 
Commons  declaration  it  was  ignored. 

And  meanwhile  Speech  was  silenced.  Barentin,  Keeper 
of  the  Seals,  had  seen  to  that.  He  wrote  to  the  King  that 
it  was  imperative  the  Commons  should  be  silenced  until  the 
Royal  Session  was  held.  He  wrote  :  "Coupez  Court." 
Have  done  with  the  business !  A  simple  way  to  silence  the 
Commons  was  found. 

It  was  upon  Friday  the  19th  of  June  that  Barentin  had 
written  his  letter  to  the  King.  Upon  the  Saturday  mor- 
ning, the  20th,  the  weather  having  turned  to  rain  and 
the  streets  being  deserted,  the  first  stray  members  of 
the  Commons  came  up  to  the  door  of  the  Menus  to 
resume  their  debates.  No  notice  had  reached  them,  nor 
even  their  elected  Speaker,  Bailly,  the  worthy  astronomer. 
They  came  with  umbrellas  dripping  above  them,  the  mud 
splashing  their  black  stockings  and  black  knee  breeches,  the 
rain  driving  in  upon  their  black  Court  coats.  They  tried  the 
door:  it  was  locked,  and  a  sentry  came  forward.  They  saw, 
streaked  under  the  rain,  a  little  scrap  of  writing  nailed  to  the 
door.  The  Hall  was  "closed  by  royal  order,"  and,  within, 
the  sound  of  hammering  marked  the  carpenters  at  work 
preparing  for  Monday's  ceremonial.  They  wondered: 
others  came ;  the  group  grew  until  at  last  many  hundreds  of 


THE   BASTILLE  275 

the  Commons  stood  there  without,  upon  the  pavement  of 
the  wide  planted  avenue.  Mirabeau  was  there  and  Robes- 
pierre was  there,  Sieves,  Bailly — all  the  Commons.  Up  at 
the  end  of  the  way  the  King's  great  Palace  lay  silent  and,  as 
it  were,  empty  under  the  rain.  No  one  crossed  its  vast  open 
courtyard;  its  shut  streaming  windows  stared  dully  at  the 
town.  The  Commons  moved  away  in  a  herd,  leaving  the 
sentry  and  his  comrade  to  pace  and  be  drenched,  and  the 
little  scrap  of  writing  to  be  washed  and  blurred  on  the 
locked  door.  As  they  moved  off  the  noise  of  hammering 
within  grew  fainter  till  they  heard  it  no  more. 

That  very  middle-class  sight,  a  great  mob  of  umbrellas 
wandering  in  the  streets,  was  full  of  will:   wandering  from 
one  place  to  another  they  landed  at  last  in  a  tennis  court 
which  was  free,  just  where  a  narrow  side-street  of  the  south- 
ern town  makes  an  elbow.     Into  that  shelter  they  poured: 
and  over  against  them,  watching  all  they  did  from  above, 
from  his  home  just  across  the  lane,  was  Barentin,  Keeper 
of  the  Seals.     He  saw  the  umbrellas  folded  at  the  door,  the 
hundreds  pressing  in,  damply;  he  saw  through  the  lights  of 
the  court  their  damp  foot-prints  on  the  concrete  of  the  hall— 
a  table  brought:  JBai%,  the  president,  standing  upon  it 
above   the    throng    and    reading  out  the    oath    that    they  \ 
"  ^jWJLj""/   rfiftper**   Ml   they   fod   given    the    rmfrVrf  -rr~ 
constitution"  — then  the  press  of  men  signing  that  declar- 
ation one  by  one. 

He  heard  the  mob  gathering  outside  and  filling  the  street. 
Among  them  at  least  one  witness  has  left  a  record  of  what 
could  be  heard  through  the  open  doors  —  how  Mirabeau 
reluctantly  signed,  pleading  popular  pressure;  how  one  man 
only  refused  to  sign,  thinking  it  what  it  was,  rebellion.  He 
was  Martin,  of  Auch. 


, 


276  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

/      It   was    the   summer   solstice,    a   date   unlucky   to   the 
Bourbons. 

The  King  heard  all  these  things  —  but  there  was  nothing 

»•  to   be   done.     Sunday   passed,  and   Monday  —  the   Royal 

\  Session  was  postponed.     It  was  not  till  Tuesday  morning, 

\the  23rd,  at  ten  that  the  procession  formed  and  that  Louis 

prepared  to  attend  it.     It  was  still  raining. 

All  the  pomp  that  could  be  gathered  had  been  gathered 
for  that  occasion,  though  the  very  skies  were  against  it. 
Four  thousand  men  stood  to  arms,  lining  that  less  than  half 
a  mile  from  the  Palace  to  the  Menus.  Hidden  in  the  woods 
beyond,  camped  up  on  Satory  and  dispersed  in  the  suburbs 
around,  six  regiments  more  were  ready.  A  vast  crowd, 
wholly  silent,  watched  the  Court  go  by.  The  Queeh  un- 
broken (but  carrying  such  recent  agony!),  Artois  vivacious 
and  trim,  the  Ministers  hurried,  Louis  somewhat  bent, 
fat,  suffering. 

A  man  who  saw  that  sight  has  written  that  he  thought  to 
see  some  great  funeral  go  by:  he  was  right.  Of  the  two 
million  dead  which  the  Revolution  demanded  from  Moscow 
to  the  Tagus,  the  first  was  passing  in  the  splendid  coach  of 
mean,  JUnquestioned  Security.  That  fixity 
of  political  creed  and  that  certitude  inlsocial  structure,  which 
hitherto  no  wars  had  shaken  in  Europe  for  century  upon 
century  of  Christian  order,  had  perished.  Men  cannot  live 
or  breathe  without  political  security,  yet  for  now  more  than  a 
hundred  years  Europe  has  in  vain  awaited  its  return. 

The  King  had  reached  his  throne  in  the  great  shed  of  the 
Menus;  the  Queen  was  beside  him ;  the  Orders,  the  Nobles 
and  the  Clergy  stood  ranked  on  either  side ;  then  after  some 
delay  the  Commons  were  permitted  to  enter  by  a  mean  side- 
door  and  to  fill  the  dark  end  of  the  place  with  their  dark 


THE  BASTILLE  277 

numbers.  .  .  .  Where  was  Necker?  The  Symbol  of 
the  New  Age  was  not  there;  the  fatuous  Genevese  had  stayed 
at  home.  He  had  presided  at  the  Council  which  had 
drawn  up  the  declaration  the  King  was  about  to  read.  He 
-may  have  suggested  certain  softenings  of  phrase  in  it;  they 
may  have  been  rejected  by  the  Queen  or  another — but  it 
was  a  document  the  responsibility  of  which  he,  in  duty, 
bore;  it  was  for  him  to  resign  or  to  be  present:  he  hedged 
by  his  absence  and  let  it  be  thought  that  he  protested. 

With  a  rumble  and  a  shuffling  the  twelve  hundred  of  them 
sat  down.  When  they  were  all  well  sat  down,  Barentin 
in  a  loud  voice  proclaimed:  "Gentlemen,  the  King  gives 
you  leave  to  be  seated!"  The  King  turned  to  the  Queen 
upon  his  left  and  bade  her  also  take  her  throne.  She  cour- 
tesied  with  an  exaggerated  grandeur  and  chose  to  stand 
while  the  whole  long  speech  was  delivered — a  royal  witness  to 
the  Crown  of  which  she  was  now  much  more  the  strength  and 
principle  than  any  other  there. 

The  speech  was  decisive.  It  willed  this  and  that  in  strong 
imperatives  —  even  the  voice  of  the  King,  into  whose  mouth 
these  words  were  put,  was  firm:  he  willed  very  liberal  and 
modern  things  —  but  no  divided  authority  —  above  all,  no 
divided  authority!  The  new  and  rival  sovereign,  the 
Usurper,  must  resign.  The  Commons  were  but  the  Corn-, 
mons.  Of  their  recent  claim  no  word,  but,  upon  the 
contrary,  an  assertion  that  the  States-General  might  not, 
even  were  they  to  vote  in  common,  determine  their  own 
procedure. 

As  he  read,  here  and  there  a  man  would  applaud  —  even 
from  among  the  Commons. 

"Remember,  gentlemen,  that  none  of  your  plans,  none  of 
your  schemes  can  become  law  without  my  express  approval. 


278  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

It  is  I  that  have,  till  now,  given  my  subjects  all  their 
happiness.  .  .  .  And  the  speech  closed  with:  "I 

command  you,  therefore,  gentlemen,  to  disperse  at  once. 
To-morrow  you  shall  come  each  into  the  Hall  assigned 
to  his  order." 

When  he  had  read  these  words  the  King  sat  down:  the 
speech  was  ended.  There  was  but  a  moment  between  his 
ending  and  his  rising  again  to  go.  The  Queen,  very  digni- 
fied, rose  with  him.  Together,  and  followed  by  their  train, 
they  left  the  hall.  It  was  just  noon. 

The  Nobles  rose  in  their  turn  and  left  the  building:  the 
Bishops  preceded  them,  but  of  the  lower  clergy  many  — 
half,  perhaps  —  lingered.  The  body  of  the  Commons 
refused  to  move. 

They  sat  massed,  in  silence,  at  the  far  end  of  the  great 
gaudy  shed.  Over  against  them,  at  the  further  end,  the 
workmen  had  begun  to  take  down  the  scenery  of  that  royal 
play;  the  curtains  were  being  lowered,  the  carpets  rolled  up, 
and  there  was  hammering  again.  Across  the  empty  benches 
of  the  nobles  and  the  Hierarchy,  in  the  empty  middle  of  the 
hall,  every  exclamation,  however  subdued,  of  the  bewildered 
but  determined  Commons  echoed:  but  the  background  of 
that  interval  was  astonishment  and  silence. 

This  curious  and  dire  silence,  a  silence  of  revolt,  lasted 
perhaps  half  an  hour,  when  there  entered  into  it  the  Master 
of  the  Ceremonies,  young  Dreux  Breze. 

He  was  little  more  than  a  boy,  just  married,  of  a  refined 
and  rather  whitened  sort,  tall,  covered  with  cloth  of  gold. 
He  was  not  ashamed  to  stud  his  hands  with  diamonds,  like 
an  Oriental  or  a  woman;  he  shone  with  light  against  the 
dark  mass  of  the  Commons,  and  he  alone  wore  a  sword.  He 
bore  no  sign  or  sacred  letter,  and  his  mere  office  was  not 


THE   BASTILLE  279 

awful.1  He  advanced,  and  in  that  slightly  irritable  but 
well-bred  drawl  of  his  he  muttered  something  as  though 
ashamed.  They  cried  "Speak  up!"  He  spoke  louder. 
"They  had  heard  the  King's  orders.  ..."  He 
repeated  the  phrase.  Various  cries  and  exclamations 
arose.  Then  Mirabeau,  standing  forward,  said  -  -  What 
did  he  say  ?  It  is  uncertain,  and  will  always  be  debated, 
but  it  was  something  like  this:  "We  are  here  by  the  will  of 
the  people  and  only  death  can  dismiss  us."  Dreux  Breze 
walked  out  with  due  ceremony,  backward. 


Well,  then,  why  was  Death  not  brought  in  to  sweep  the 
Commons  ?  Here  were  soldiers  all  around  —  foreigners, 
Germans,  and  Swiss,  in  number  a  full  division:  why  was  no 
shot  fired  ?  Because,  although  apparently  no  force  lay 
opposed  to  them  save  the  mere  will  of  less  than  a  thousand 
unarmed  debaters,  there  did  in  fact  lie  opposed  to  them  the 
potential  force  of  Paris.  Close  on  a  million  souls,  say  two 
hundred  thousand  men  capable  of  bearing  arms,  almost 
homogeneous  in  opinion,  lay  twelve  miles  down  the  valley, 
as  full  of  rumour  as  a  hive  —  at  the  sound  of  a  musket  they 
might  rise  and  swarm.  It  was  not  a  calculable  thing;  Paris 
might  after  half  an  hour  of  scuffle  turn  into  a  mere  scat- 
tered crowd:  there  might  be  a  fierce  resistance,  prolonged, 
bleeding  authority  to  death  unless  a  sufficient  force  con- 
tained Paris  also,  as  the  debaters  at  Versailles  were  already 
contained.  That  force  was  summoned. 

Thirty  regiments  moved.  All  the  last  days  of  June  the 
great  roads  sounded  with  their  marching  from  every  neigh- 
bouring garrison.  The  rattle  of  new  guns  one  morning 

1  It  had  originally  been  created  to  provide  a  salary  for  one,  Pot,  who  was  further  dignified  with  the  title  of 
Rhodes  —  names  curiously  English. 


280  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

woke  from  sleep  the  unknown  Robespierre,  who  watched 
them  from  his  window  passing  interminably  under  the  July 
dawn;  they  baited  their  horses  in  the  stables  of  the  Queen. 
Of  nearly  all  the  troop  so  gathering  one  little  portion,  the 
half -irregular  militia  body  (militia,  but  permanently  armed) 
called  "the  French  Guards,"  was  other  than  foreign.  The 
"French  Guards"  might  not  indeed  be  reliable  but,  as  it 
was  thought,  they  hardly  counted.  The  rest  were  for  the 
most  part  German-speaking  mercenaries,  the  solid  weapon 
of  the  Crown:  and  still  they  gathered. 

Neck  to  neck  with  the  advance  of  that  mobilisation  the 
Assembly  raced  for  power;  for  every  brigade  appearing  you 
may  count  a  new  claim.  In  the  first  hours  of  their  revolt, 
when  Dreux  Breze  had  just  retired,  they  proclaimed  them- 
selves "Inviolable"  -that  is,  in  their  new  sovereignty, 
they  declared  an  armed  offence  to  that  sovereignty  to 
be  treason. 

The  sight  of  Paris,  heaving  as  for  movement  on  the  24th 
of  June,  Wednesday,  when  the  news  of  the  royal  session 
and  its  sequel  came,  determined  the  Duke  of  Orleans  to 
take  a  line.  He  desired  to  profit  by  the  dissensions.  He 
continually  bribed  and  flattered  and  supported,  by  his  wealth 
and  through  his  parasites,  the  vast  and  spontaneous  surge  of 
opinion,  adding  perhaps  a  fraction  to  its  power.  He  was 
among  the  stupidest  of  the  Bourbons,  for  he  thought  in  his 
heart  he  might  be  king.  This  null  and  dissipated  fellow 
led  a  minority  of  the  Nobles  to  the  Commons  and  declared 
their  adhesion  to  the  Assembly:  that  was  the  Thursday, 
the  25th  —  the  next  day  the  Court  itself,  the  King,  deliber- 
ately advised  the  union  of  all  the  orders! 
/  The  Court  had  yielded  —  for  the  moment.  The  Court 
thought  it  was  better  so:  the  troops  were  gathering,  soon 


THE  BASTILLE  281 

a  blow  was  to  be  struck,  and  the  less  friction  the  better  while 
it  was  preparing.  .  .  . 

So,  as  the  first  week  of  July  went  by,  everything  was 
preparing :  the  Electorial  College  of  Paris  had  met  and  con- 
tinued in  session,  forming  spontaneously  a  local  executive 
for  the  capital:  certain  of  the  French  Guard  in  Paris  had 
sworn  to  obey  the  Assembly  only,  had  been  imprisoned 
.  .  .  and  released  by  popular  force  .  .  .  and  par- 
doned. The  last  troops  had  come  in;  the  Assembly  was 
finally  formed.  On  the  day  when  it  named  its  first  com- 
mittee to  discuss  the  new  Constitution,  the  Queen  and  those 
about  the  Queen  had  completed  their  plan,  and  the  Crown 
was  ready  to  re-arise  and  to  scatter  its  enemies. 

There  was  in  this  crisis  a  military  simplicity  as  behoved 
it,  for  it  was  a  military  thing.  No  intriguing.  Necker,  the 
symbol  of  the  new  claims,  was  to  go  —  booted  out  at  a 
moment's  notice  and  over  the  frontier  as  well.  A  man  of 
the  Queen's,  a  man  who  had  been  ambassador  at  Vienna, 
a  very  trusted  servant  of  over  fifty  years  continually  with 
the  Monarchy,  a  man  of  energy,  strong-stepping,  loud, 
Breteuil  was  in  one  sharp  moment  to  take  his  place.  Old 
Broglie,  brave  and  renowned,  was  to  grasp  the  army  — 
and  the  thing  was  done:  the  Assembly  gone  to  smoke:  the 
debating  over:  silence  and  ancient  right  restored.  And  as 
for  the  dependence  on  opinion  and  on  a  parliamentary 
majority  for  money!  .  .  .  why,  a  bold  bankruptcy  and 
begin  again. 

So  the  Queen,  sflw  foe  sharp  issue,  now  that  all  the  regi- 
ments were  assembled.  A  corps  of  German  mercenaries 
were  in  the  Park,  encamped ;  their  officers  were  cherished  in 
the  rooms  of  the  Polignacs :  they  were  a  symbol  of  what  was 
toward.  Paris  might  or  might  not  rise.  If  it  rose,  there 


282  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

would  be  action ;  if  not,  none.  In  either  case  victory  and  a 
prize  worth  all  the  miserable  cajoling  and  submission  to 
which  the  Court  had  been  compelled  while  the  soldiers  were 
still  unready.  They  were  ready  now.  So  the  Queen. 

On  Saturday  the  llth  of  July,  at  three  in  the  afternoon, 
Necker  was  sitting  down  with  his  wife  and  a  certain 
friend  to  dinner:  the  excellent  dinner  of  a  man  worth 
four  millions  of  money  —  doubtfully  acquired.  Ten  thou- 
sand men  lay  at  arms  within  an  hour  of  Versailles;  at  all 
the  issues  of  Paris  were  troops  amounting  to  at  least  two 
divisions  more  —  mainly  German  cavalry :  one  regiment  at 
Charente,  Samade;  one  regiment  at  Ivry,  one,  of  German 
hussars,  at  the  Champ  de  Mars;  one,  of  Swiss  infantry,  with 
a  battery,  at  the  Etoile  (where  is  now  the  Arc  de  Triomphe). 
Two  more,  German,  south  of  the  river;  a  whole  camp  at  the 
northern  gate  —  and  many  others.  No  food  could  enter 
the  city  save  by  leave  of  that  circle  of  arms.  .  .  .  To 
Necker,  so  sitting  there  at  table,  was  brought  a  "note  from 
the  King;  he  opened  it:  it  told  him  he  was  ordered  out  of 
office  and  ordered  out  of  the  kingdom  too.  He  finished  his 
dinner,  and  then  took  horse  and  coach  and  drove  away 
along  the  Brussels  road. 

There  followed  three  days  which  very  much  resembled, 
to  the  Queen  and  the  General  Staff  of  the  Resistance,  those 
days  during  which  a  general  action  is  proceeding  at  the 
front  and  a  stream  of  accounts,  true  and  false,  exaggerated, 
distorted,  coming  pell-mell  and  in  the  wrong  order,  confuse 
rather  than  inform  the  anxious  ears  at  headquarters  far  in 
the  rear.  Men  tore  galloping  to  and  fro  continually  up  and 
down  the  twelve  miles  of  road  between  the  palace  and  the 
gates  of  Paris.  "Paris  had  risen."  "No,  only  an  unarmed 
mob  parading  the  streets."  "Yes,  there  had  been  a  collision 


THE  BASTILLE  283 

• 

with  Lambesc's  cavalry."  .  .  .  On  Sunday,  late,  a 
cloud  of  dust  was  Lambesc's  orderly  coming  to  Ver- 
sailles with  news:  there  had  been  no  bloodshed.  Monday 
more  rumours:  "They  are  forging  weapons."  .  .  . 
"They  cannot  move:  .  .  .  they  lack  ammunition." 
.  .  .  "They  have  formed  patrols:  .  .  .  the  streets 
are  patrolled."  Then,  at  night,  fires  were  reflected  on  the 
cloudy  sky  down  the  valley  —  the  populace  were  burning 
the  Octroi  Barriers. 

It  was  determined  by  the  chiefs  of  the  army  to  force  the 
northern  gate  of  Paris  and  so  to  subdue  the  tumult  —  but 
there  was  neither  fear  nor  haste:  the  tumult  was  a  mere 
civilian  tumult:  the  thousands  roaring  in  Paris  had  no  arms 
-  and  then  what  about  organisation  ?  How  can  a  mob 
organise?  Tuesday  came,  the  14th  of  July,  a  memorable 
day,  and  in  the  forenoon  news  or  rumours  reached  Versailles 
that  a  stock  of  arms  had  been  sacked.  It  was  the  Arsenal 

—  no,  this  time  came  details ;  it  was  the  Invalides  that  had 
been  sacked — twenty  thousand  muskets.     More  news:  pow- 
der had  been  found  and  seized  by  the  mob;    in  the  great 
square  before  the  Town  Hall  a  jolly  priest,  sitting  astride  of 
a  barrel,  was  seeing  to  the  serving  out  of  powder  and  of  ball 

—  one  almost  heard  the  firing.     "The  Bastille  has  most  of 
the  ammunition  in  Paris.   No  mob  can  take  that!  The  pieces 
have  been  trained  on  the  street  a  whole  fortnight  since." 
"The  Bastille  has  checked  the  mob."     "No,  they  have 
sacked  that  also,  with  all  its  ammunition."     "They  have 
captured   artillery."     "Nonsense!   a   mob   cannot   capture 
guns!"     Then   again,   more   definite   and   certain,    longer 
accounts,  eye-witnesses,  as  the  afternoon  drew  on  to  evening. 
One:    "It  has  fallen."     Another:    "I  saw  the  governor 
killed.     ...     a  thousand  men   in  the  crowd  were  hit, 


.  •/ 

MA 


284  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

but  the  crowd  kept  on.  .  .  .  How  many  dead?  A 
hundred,  at  least  a  hundred."  "They  have  cannon  on 
Montmartre  —  the  northern  gate  cannot  be  forced." 
Berthier  wrote  to  the  King  alone:  "To-night  the  troops 
will  master  the  streets."  And  meanwhile,  like  a  chorus  of 
human  voices  to  all  this  roar  of  powder,  the  Assembly 
pouring  out  decisions  and  acting  the  moral  sovereign  man- 
fully in  the  face  of  material  arms  — sitting  "permanently." 
Even  at  midnight,  when  nearly  all  was  known  and  the 
popular  victory  assured,  Bailly  the  Speaker  was  still  sitting 
there  presiding  after  a  sitting  of  seventy-two  hours  over  the 
drowsy  Commons. 

And  they  had  voted!  They  had  voted  regrets  for  Necker; 
they  had  voted  the  responsibility  of  all  advisers  of  the  King 
for  these  calamities:  they  had  voted  bankruptcy  "infamous." 
So  many  moral  broadsides  fired  at  the  Queen. 

The  morning  of  the  15th  came;  the  firing  had  ceased, 
the  smoke  had  rolled  away,  and  with  it  the  issue  of  the 
action  lay  plain.  Paris  had  conquered. 

The  King  alone  with  his  brother,  unarmed,  unguarded, 
walked  to  the  Parliament  House  and  announced  the  with- 
drawal of  the  mercenaries ;  the  Queen  —  bitterness  of  irony ! 
— had  to  stand  smiling  with  her  children  at  the  central 
balcony  of  the  palace  above  the  courtyard  and  to  receive 
the  ardent  homage  of  the  people  for  the  failure  of  her  great 
design;  in  a  few  months,  in  October,  she  was  to  stand 
on  that  balcony  again. 

All  that  day  and  the  next  the  King  sat  anxiously  with  his 
Council  debating  only  one  thing  —  Marie  Antoinette's 
purpose  that  he  should  fly.  She  urged  it  with  vehemence: 
her  jewels  were  packed  and  ready  —  they  would  fly  to  Metz 
and  conquer  in  a  civil  war;  but  the  majority  outweighed 


v 


v 


AUTOGRAPH  NOTE  OF  LOUIS  XVI. 

Recalling  Necker,  on  July  16th,  after  the  fall  of  the  Bastille 


THE  BASTILLE  285 

her,  notably  old  Broglie,  who  feared  the  issue  of  German 
mercenaries  against  French  troops  —  and  the  Kin^ 
remained.  She  with  angry  tears  gave  way:  it  was  decided 
that  the  King  should,  upon  the  contrary,  seek  Paris  on  the 
morrow,  accept  and  legalise  the  acts  of  the  city,  its  new 
popular  armed  force,  its  new  elected  Mayorality,  La  Fayette 
the  chosen  head  of  the  one,  Bailly  occupying  the  other. 

The  royal  plan  had  failed:  let  the  King  accept  the  new 
conditions  and  meet  Paris  half-way.  Such  were  the! 
decisions,  and  Louis  wrotfi-lo  Necker  recalling^  him -- the 
abortive  Ministry  of  tne  Resistance  was  ended. 

But  thaT  night,  inThe  dead  darkness,  Artois  fledJrom  the 
coming  terror;  old  Vermond  also,  the  friend  and  tutor, 
Enghien,  Conde,  many  another;  and  *the  Queen,  with 
passionate  love,  compelled  one  now  again  her  friend  to  fly : 
the  Madame  de  Polignac.  She  fled  and  was  saved,  bear- 
ing with  her  two  ill-spelt,  blotted  lines  in  Marie  Antoinette's 
untrained  and  hurried  hand:  "Good-bye,  dearest  of  my 
friends;  it  is  a  dreadful  and  a  necessary  word.  Good-byei*s 

In  this  way  did  the  Assembly  enter  into  its  sovereignty, 
and  in  this  way  did  Marie  Antoinette  first  find  —  though  l\ 
she  never  knew  or  grasped  —  but  first  find  the  temper  of  I) 
the  Fre^cLpaopl^^^wliosp  Jca?rA 

organise  Jrom  below.  f 


That  creative  summer  of  '89,  in  which  the  Assembly,  now 
victorious,  began  its  giant  business,  was  in  the  Queen's  eyes 
nothing  but  a  respite  for  the  Throne,  or  a  halt  in  a  retreat 
between  one  sharp  action  lost  and  the  next  to  be  ventured 
later,  when  new  troops  should  be  at  hand  and  a  new  occasion 
serve.  That  these  speech-makers  hard  by  should  declare 


286  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  new  creed  of  Rights,  should  —  in  words  —  abolish  Feudal 
Dues,  should  debate  the  exact  limits  of  the  King's  power  - 
all  that  was  wind.  Even  the  anarchy,  coincident  with  that 
vast  transition,  powerfully  as  it  affected  her  spirit  (and  her 
letters  show  it)  with  horror,  affected  it  still  more  with  hatred 
and  with  a  determination  so  to  hold  or  tame  this  wild  beast,  her 
husband's  people,  that  her  son  should  have  his  right  at  last, 
and  that  she  herself  might  be  free  from  a  ceaseless  humiliation. 

They  were  killing  men  everywhere:  they  had  killed  the 
offensive  and  corrupt  old  Foulon  in  the  streets  of  Paris  - 
he  and  his  powerful,  loathsome  son-in-law,  Berthier: 
square-jawed,  an  oppressor  grievous  to  God,  Berthier  who, 
so  lately,  in  those  abortive  three  days  of  the  Resistance,  had 
sat  at  the  King's  elbow  promising  that  Paris  should  be  held ; 
Berthier  had  been  clubbed  to  death  and  shot  down  as  he 
swung  a  musket  in  defence  of  his  big  body.  In  the  prov- 
inces everywhere  the  country  houses  burned. 

The  Queen  waited.  She  wrote  to  her  brother,  to  her  dear 
friend  Madame  de  Polignac;  she  chose  (in  the  absence  of 
that  friend)  a  new  governess  for  the  Children  of  France, 
the  worthy  widow  of  Tourzel,  a  duchess  for  the  occasion. 
She  waited  and  did  nothing.  AllSeptember  was  a  wrangling 
over  the  King's  Veto  — his  rigKTTo  refuse  a  law:  she  may 
have  knowTl1  vaglfely  that  to  her  the  nicknames  of  "Veto" 
was  thereby  attached :  she  did  not  heed  it.  In  the  last  days 
of  the  month  a  vigorous  attempt  to  persuade  the  King  to 
fly  was  once  more  made  and  once  more  failed.  By  Octo- 
ber new  troops  had  come  —  their  numbers  were  to  prove 
insufficient  for  attack  but  fatally  sufficient  for  enthusi- 
asm, and  that  enthusiasm  of  loyal  courtiers  (breaking 
out  almost  within  earshot  of  a  Paris  fretting  at  every 
delay,  hungry,  mystified)  provoked  the  next  disaster. 


XII 
OCTOBER 

SEPTEMBER  23,  1789,  TO  MAUNDY  THURSDAY,  APRIL  1,  1790 

ON  THE  23rd  of  September  the  Regiment  of  Flanders 
marched  into  Versailles. 
To  seize  all  that  follows  two  things  must  be  clearly 
fixed:     First,  that  the  Queen  was  now  separate  frniruall 
the  life  around  Jier  ;  secondlyjiiat  the  accidents  of  the  next 
fortnight  determined  all  that  remained  of  her  life^^ 

The  Revolution,  now  organised,  possessed  of  regular 
authorities  and  of  a  clear  theory,  was  in  action,  moving 
with  the  rapidity  of  some  French  campaign  towards  clean 
victory,  or,  upon  an  error  or  a  check,  defeat  —  a  defeat 
absolute  as  are  ever  the  failures  of  high  adventure. 

The  Queen  has  been  called  the  chief  opponent  of  that 
Revolutionary  idea  and  of  those  new  Revolutionary  authori- 
ties: it  is  an  error  so  to  regard  her;  she  did  not  meet  their 
advance  in  so  comprehensive  a  fashion.  She  saw  nothing 
but  a  meamngtes&^tgrm  whirling  about  her;  she  cared  for 
nothing  hi  the  great  issue  but  tKe^reserratronr-  during  the 
tempest,  and  the  full  restoration  aAf  the  encLof-it,  of  all  that 
was  to  have  been  her  little  son's;  she  feared  as  her  only 
enemy  a  violent  and  beastly  iKngj^aT^^bTliTwEose  activity 


she  recognised  all  that  had  so  long  bewildered  her  in  the 
French  people;  but  while  she  feared  it  she  also  despised 
it  as  a  thing  less  than  human,  incapable  of  plan,  able  to  hurt 
but  certain  at  last  to  be  tamed.  The  march  of  Paris  upon 

287 


288  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Versailles  which  was  now  at  hand,  with  its  flaming  brutality, 
its  anarchy  of  thousands  and  of  blood,  confirmed  in  her  for- 
ever her  wholly  insufficient  judgment.  From  those  days 
until  she  died  her  only  appeal  was  to  the  foreigner,  her  only 
strategy  the  choice  of  manner  and  of  time  for  using  an 
actual  or  a  potential  invasion. 

It  may  next  be  asked  why  the  Regiment  of  Flanders  march- 
ing in  led  to  such  abrupt  and  to  such  enormous  conse- 
quences ?  It  was  accompanied  by  a  section  of  guns  only, 
and  though  its  ready  ammunition  was  high  for  a  mere 
change  of  garrison  in  those  days,1  it  was  but  one  unit  more 
where,  three  months  before,  division  after  division  had 
been  massed  round  Paris  and  throughout  Versailles. 

The  answer  to  the  question  is  to  be  found  in  the  temper 
of  those  who  watched  that  entry.  It  took  place  in  the  after- 
noon with  imposing  parade ;  the  grenadiers  of  Flanders  filed 
up  the  Paris  road  between  the  ranks  of  the  Body-guard  - 
a  new  regiment  of  the  Guard  which  was  still  stranger  and 
somewhat  hostile  to  the  temper  of  the  crowd.  Again,  Flan- 
ders was  a  quasi-foreign  regiment,  comparable  to  those 
which  the  Crown  had  drafted  in  before  the  rising  of  Paris 
destroyed  the  plan  of  a  civil  war  and  had  since,  on  a  deliber- 
ate pledge,  withdrawn.  Again  the  reinforcement  coin- 
cided with  that  long  verbal  struggle  upon  the  acceptation 
by  Louis  of  the  Decrees  (of  the  Rights  of  Man  and  the 
abolition  of  Feudal  Dues) — a  verbal  struggle  apparently  fu- 
tile, but  in  essence  symbolic  of  the  Veto  of  the  Crown.  To 
this  it  must  be  added  that  Paris,  in  which,  in  spite  of  harvest, 
a  partial  famine  reigned,  was  again  roused  for  adventure; 
that  now  for  weeks  the  opposition  of  the  King  to  the  Decrees 
of  the  Assembly  had  exasperated  the  leaders  of  opinion  — 

^hey  were  eleven  hundred  strong,  with  about  half  a  dozen  reserve  cartridges  a  man  and  the  pouches  full; 
also  one  waggon  of  grape  for  the  guns  attached  to  the  regiment. 


OCTOBER  289 

those  innumerable  writers  and  those  orators  who  could  now 
voice,  inflame,  and  even  guide  an  insurrection;  finally,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  there  remained  but  one  solid 
and  highly  disciplined  body  intact  throughout  the  insurrec- 
tions of  that  summer,  the  desertions  and  the  siding  of  the 
troops  with  the  populace — this  was  the  Army  of  the  East 
that  lay  along  the  frontier  under  the  command  of  Bouille. 
It  was  of  no  great  size — some  25,000  men,  but  it  was 
largely  foreign  (Swiss  and  German)  in  composition,  was 
excellently  led,  well  drilled,  already  political  in  the  united 
spirit  of  its  command.  Thither  it  was  feared  and  hoped 
the  King  would  fly:  a  regiment  or  two  to  flank  his  evasion 
and  to  escort  it  would  be  sufficient:  this  was  the  meaning 
of  the  Regiment  of  Flanders. 

All  this,  however,  would  not  alone  have  provoked  an  upris- 
ing :  the  departure  of  the  King  actually  attempted  might  have^ 
done  so,  but  we  now  know,  and  most  then  believed,  that 
though  the  Queen  urged  flight,  Louis  would  not  consider  it. 
The  true  cause  of  the  catastrophe;  the  disturbance,  which 
ruined  the  unstable  equilibrium  of  political  forces  that 
October,  was  a  manifest  exaltation  or  crisis  of  emotion 
observable  in  the  officers  of  the  newly  arrived  regiment, 
still  stronger  in  the  Guards,  pervading  the  whole  Court,  and 
nowhere  centred  more  fiercely  than  in  the  heart  of  the  Queenx 
It  was  as  though  the  tramp  of  that  one  column  of  relief, 
added  to  so  much  restrained  and  impatient  emotion,  coming 
after  the  silent  angers  of  that  long  summer,  coinciding  with 
a  critical  intensity  of  indignation  and  of  loyalty  within  the 
palace,  was  just  the  final  sound  that  broke  down  prudence./ 
All  the  commissioned,  many  of  the  rank,  betrayed  the  new 
glow  of  loyalty  in  chance  phrases  and  in  jests ;  chance  swords 
were  drawn  and  shown,  chance  menaces  or  chance  snatches 


290  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  loyal  songs  in  taverns  led  on  to  the  act  which  clothed  all 
this  rising  spirit  with  form,  and  stood  out  as  a  definite 
challenge  to  Paris  and  to  the  Assembly. 

It  was  customary  (and  still  is)  for  the  officers  resident 
in  a  French  garrison  to  entertain  the  officers  of  a  newly-come 
regiment.  The  Guards  had  never  done  so  yet.  They  were 
all  of  the  gentry,  the  general  custom  of  the  army  affected 
them  little,  for  in  all  ranks  the  gentlemen  of  the  Guard  were 
in  theory,  to  some  extent  in  reality,  equal  in  blood.  Never- 
theless their  officers  chose,  for  the  purposes  of  a  political 
demonstration,  the  pretext  of  a  custom  hitherto  thought 
unworthy  of  their  corps.  The  Guard  had  fixed  upon 
Thursday,  the  first  of  October,  to  show  this  civility  to 
Flanders.  In  the  atmosphere  of  these  days  the  occasion 
could  not  but  become  a  very  different  matter  from  such 
a  dinner  as  the  mess  of  even  the  premier  corps  —  so 
acting  for  the  first  time  —  could  offer  to  a  provincial  body 
of  the  line. 

In  the  expenses  determined1  and  the  place  chosen,  it 
was  evident  that  all  the  Court  was  moving:  the  great  theatre 
of  the  palace,  unused  for  so  long  and  reserved  for  the  great- 
est and  most  official  ceremonies,  was  made  ready,  lavishly; 
the  tables  were  set  upon  its  stages,  the  lights,  the  decorations 
were  the  King's;  and  when  the  officers  of  Flanders,  all, 
perhaps  (save  their  Colonel) ,  unready  for  so  much  splendour, 
found  themselves  in  the  Salle  d'Hercule  —  the  guests  of  the 
palace  rather  than  of  the  Guards  —  it  was  apparent  that 
some  large  affair  was  before  them:  they  were  led  to  the 
theatre  and  the  banquet  began. 

It  was  just  three  o'clock:  down  in  the  town  the  Assembly 

1  The  dinner  alone,  apart  from  wine,  ices,  lights,  etc.,  was,  even  in  the  prices  of  that  day  over  £i  a  head, 
say  nowadays  £2.  Yet  the  individual  hosts  were  asked  for  but  five  shillings  each:  the  difference  must  have 
been  paid!  And  the  winel 


OCTOBER  291 

was  voting  the  last  clauses  of  the  Constitution.  In 
the  courtyards  of  the  palace  the  private  soldiers  of 
Flanders  had  gathered,  buzzing,  at  the  gates  —  later,  and 
for  a  purpose,  some  few  were  admitted,  but  that  was 
not  before  some  hours  had  passed:  they  pressed  curi- 
ously, now  and  then  making  way  for  some  belated 
member  of  the  band,  which,  with  that  of  the  Guards,  was 
to  play  at  the  banquet. 

The  tables  were  set  in  a  horse-shoe,  and  two  hundred  and 
ten  places  were  laid:  more  than  the  two  messes  were  con- 
cerned !  Eighty  seats  were  for  the  Guards  —  for  all  that 
could  be  found  connected  with  Guards  —  and  the  Guards 
were  there  in  full;  double  their  usual  number  were  in  Ver- 
sailles: there  were  others,  strange  guests  and  chosen  volun- 
teers. There  were  others,  men  whose  presence  proved  a 
certain  plan,  officers  of  the  local  national  militia,  the  new 
armed  force  of  the  Revolution,  but  officers  picked  carefully 
for  their  weakness  or  their  secret  disapproval  of  the  national 
movement.  So  they  sat  down  and  began  to  eat  and  drink; 
there  were  provided  two  bottles  a  man.1 

Outside  the  great  empty  theatre  the  autumn  evening 
closed;  within,  by  the  thousand  lights  of  it,  the  ladies  of 
the  Court,  coming,  as  the  banquet  rose  higher,  into  the  boxes 
to  applaud,  saw  one  by  one  the  white  cockades  of  the  Guards 
transferred  to  their  guests.  The  national  colours  were 
regulation  for  Flanders;  they  were  the  essential  mark  of  the 
new  national  Militia  —  yet,  first  one  guest  then  another, 
eagerly  or  reluctantly,  weakly  or  defiantly,  took  on  the  white 
cockade  of  the  old  Monarchy  which  the  Guards  still 
legally  wore.  The  women  folded  paper  cockades  and 
threw  them  down  ...  at  last  all  seated  there  were 

1  2 10  men,  400  bottles. 


292  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

under  the  emblem;  some  say  that  black  for  the  Queen  was 
also  shown.  They  drank  to  the  King,  the  Queen,  the  Heir; 
the  noise  of  laughter  and  of  enthusiasm  grew,  the  toasts  and 
the  cheers  were  exchanged  from  the  boxes  to  the  stage; 
the  floor  of  the  theatre  filled  with  new-comers — speech  and 
the  exhilaration  of  companionship  gained  on  them  and  rose. 
Some  there  in  wine  felt  now  again,  like  a  memory  in  the 
blood,  the  old  and  passionate  French  love  of  the  Kings. 
Some,  who  had  come  to  Versailles  secretly  determined  for  the 
Crown,  now  at  last  gave  full  rein  and  let  the  soul  gallop  to 
its  end.  All  were  on  fire  with  that  Gallic  ardour  for  adven- 
ture against  great  odds,  and  in  all  that  Gallic  passion 
for  comradeship  was  aflame.  Some  few  of  the  rank  and 
file  were  admitted  .  .  .  the  heavy  men  of  Flanders 
.  .  .  they  also  drank.  The  Queen  (the  meat  being  now 
gone,  the  fruits  come)  was  seen ;  whether  come  by  reluctance 
or  willing,  in  her  box.  .  .  .  They  cried  her  name,  and 
swords  were  drawn.  They  clamoured  for  her  to  come 
down  from  where  she  sat  there  radiant,  hearing  at  last  the 
voices  and  the  mood  upon  which  (so  little  did  she  under- 
stand of  war)  she  imagined  and  had  imagined  her  victory  to 
depend. 

She  came  down  and  passed  slowly  before  them  and  their 
delirium,  smiling  highly,  holding  in  her  arms  her  little  son; 
and  the  King,  less  certain  of  the  issue,  heavy,  splashed  with 
the  mud  of  his  hunting,  went  with  her  as  she  proceeded. 
They  passed.  The  height  of  their  fever  was  upon  these  sol- 
diers; one  leant  over  to  the  band  and  suggested,  "Pleasant 
it  is  to  be  .  .  .  The  band  consulted ;  they  were  not 

sure  of  the  tune.  "Well  then,  play1 'O  Richard!  Oh,  my 
King!999  That  everybody  knew,  anyone  could  sing  it:  it  was 
a  tune  of  the  day  —  and  with  the  music  madness  took  them. 


OCTOBER  293 

They  poured  out  into  the  cold  night  air  of  the  marble  court, 
singing,  cheering,  all  armed  —  defiant  of  the  new  world. 
The  whole  life  of  the  Palace  and  its  thousands,  invigorated, 
mixed  with  music  and  re-heightened  the  strain.  Sundry 
bugles  were  blown  as  though  for  a  charge.  The  noise  of 
that  clamour  rang  through  the  town,  the  populace  without 
the  gate  was  gathering,  the  Militia  armed,  and  the  crowd 
thus  alarmed  in  the  far  night  could  see,  beyond  the  court, 
under  the  brilliant  windows  of  the  front,  a  herd  of  men  still 
cheering  madly,  the  gleam  of  swords  raised,  and  one  dark 
figure  climbing  to  the  King's  window  to  seize  and  kiss  his 
hand ;  and  against  the  light  within  the  shadows  of  the  family 
approving. 

The  colonel  of  the  Versailles  Militia  went  to  the  Palace 
and  returned:  the  crowd  dispersed,  the  cheering  of  the 
revellers  died  away.  Next  day  was  sober;  yet  even  all  next 
day  the  exaltation,  though  now  sober,  grew.  The  national 
uniform  of  the  Militia  was  insulted  and  challenged  in 
Versailles,  turned  out  of  the  palace.  The  Queen,  ineffably 
ignorant,  gave  colours  to  a  deputation  of  that  Militia  and 
begged  them,  with  a  smile,  to  believe  that  yesterday  had 
pleased  her  greatly  —  she  had  seen  certain  of  their  officers 
at  the  feast  —  and  so  little  was  enough  to  deceive  her! 
There  was  another  milder  meeting  (for  the  men),  a  mere 
exchange  of  glasses,  and  all  Saturday,  the  3rd  of  October, 
the  armament  of  the  Crown,  such  as  it  was — some  thou- 
sands —  stood  ready  and  did  not  forget  the  valour  and  the 
ardent  loyalty  which  their  chiefs  had  lit  with  such  memor- 
able cheers  and  songs. 

But  another  noise  and  another  life  began  beyond  that 
fringe  of  woods  which  eastward  veiled  Paris.  The  million 
of  that  place  were  in  a  hum:  messages  from  them  and  to 


294  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

them.  Marat  had  explored  the  new  force  in  Versailles,  the 
presses  in  Paris  were  raining  pamphlets  —  something 
confused  and  enormous,  a  vision  of  their  national  King 
abandoning  them,  a  nightmare  of  treason ;  all  this  mixed  with 
hunger  oppressed  the  mind  of  the  million.  I  say  "mixed 
with  hunger,"  for  though  there  was  by  this  time  plenty  of 
grain  there  was  little  flour,  and  in  the  lack  of  bread  violent 
angers  had  risen:  some  thought  the  Assembly  (their  talis- 
man), the  very  nation  itself,  to  be  again  in  peril  from  the 
soldiers.  So  all  Sunday,  October  4,  the  hive  of  Paris  droned 
in  its  narrow  streets  and  gathered;  upon  Monday,  for  the 
second  time  that  year,  it  swarmed. 


To  the  west  and  to  the  south  of  Paris  there  runs  a  ring 
of  clean  high  land  against  the  sky,  and  it  is  clothed  with 
forests;  one  part  of  it,  still  charming  and  in  places  aban- 
doned, is  called  the  Forest  of  Meudon,  and  many  who  read 
this  have  walked  through  it  and  have  seen  at  the  end  of 
some  one  of  its  long  rides  the  great  city  below. 

In  the  morning  of  Monday,  the  5th  of  October,  1789, 
the  far  corner  of  these  woods  near  Chatillon  rang  with  shots, 
and  down  one  alley  or  another  would  come  from  time  to  time 
the  soft  and  heavy  beat  of  horses  at  a  canter,  as  grooms  and 
servants  moved  with  the  guns.  The  King  was  shooting. 
A  south  west  wind  blew  through  the  trees  with  no  great 
violence;  some  rain  had  fallen  and  more  threatened  from 
the  shredded,  low,  grey  clouds  above.  Of  all  the  company 
in  those  alleys  and  between  those  high  trees,  on  which  the 
leaves,  though  withered,  still  hung,  the  King  alone  was 
undisturbed.  His  pleasure  in  horsemanship  and  his  seven 
miles'  ride  from  the  palace,  his  delight  in  the  morning  aira 


OCTOBER  295 

and  his  keen  attention  to  the  sole  occupation  that  called  out 
his  lethargic  energy,  forbade  him  to  consider  other  things; 
but  all  his  suite  were  wondering,  each  in  his  degree,  what 
might  be  happening  in  the  plain  below  them,  or  in  Paris,  or 
in  the  town  of  Versailles  which  they  had  left  —  for  it  was 
known  that  Paris  was  moving. 

All  morning  long  they  shot  in  those  woods  until,  when  it 
was  already  perhaps  past  noon  and  rain  had  again  begun 
to  fall,  a  sound  of  different  riding  came  furiously  up  the 
main  alley  which  follows  the  ridge  and  springs  from  the 
high  road.  It  was  the  riding  of  a  man  who  rides  on  a 
fresh  horse  and  changes  post,  and  is  a  courier.  His  name 
was  Cubieres,  and  he  was  a  gentleman  of  the  Court  flying 
with  news,  straight  in  the  long  French  stirrup,  with  a  set 
face,  and  his  mount  belly  to  the  ground.  He  took  one 
turning,  then  another,  came  thundering  up  to  the  King 
and  drew  rein. 

The  King,  as  this  messenger  reached  him,  was  noting  his 
bag  in  a  little  book.     The  message  of  Cubieres  was  that  Paris  J 
had  marched  upon  Versailles,  that  the  great  avenue  road  i 
was  black  with  tattered  women  and  with  men,  seething  and/ 
turning,  and  demanding  food  and  blood.     He  brought  no 
rumours,  and  he  could  tell  the  King  nothing  of  the  Queen. 
The  King  mounted.     All  mounted  and  rode  at  speed.     They 
turned  their  mounts  westerly  again,  and  rode  at  speed  toward 
Versailles.     And  as  they  rode  two  feelings  dully  contended 
in  the  mind  of  Louis:    the  first  was  anxiety  for  his  wife; 
the  second  annoyance  at  the  sudden  interruption  of  his 
business;  and  later,  as  the  bulk  of  the  palace  appeared  far 
off  through  the  trees,  he  was  filled  with  that  irritant  wonder  /V 
as  to  what  he  should  do,  what  his  action  should  be:  tne/l/ 
trouble  of  decision   which  cursed  him  whenever  he  and  t 


296  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

A  action  came  face  to  face.     The  wind  had  fallen  and  now 
<,    the  rain  poured  steadily  and  drenched  them  all. 


• 

Consider  that  grey  morning  in  the  town  also  —  I  mean  in 
the  town  of  Versailles  —  and  how  under  that  same  covered 
sky  and  those  same  low  shreds  of  flying  cloud  the  empty 
streets  of  Versailles  were  arming. 

Upon  the  broad  deserted  avenue  before  the  gates  of  the 
National  Assembly  there  were  no  passers-by ;  the  drip  from 
the  brown  leaves  of  the  trees,  the  patter  from  the  eaves 
of  the  stately  houses,  and  the  gurgling  of  water  in  the  gutters 
enforced  the  silence.  Now  and  then  an  official  or  a  member 
in  black  knee-breeches  and  thin  buckled  shoes,  delicately 
stepping  from  stone  to  stone,  would  hurriedly  cross  over  the 
paving,  cloaked  and  covered  by  an  ample  umbrella,  as  was 
the  habit  of  those  heroes  when  it  rained;  but  for  the  rest 
the  streets  were  empty,  the  seats  shining  with  wet  under  the 
imperfect  autumn  light.  Far  off,  beside  the  railing  and 
before  the  wrought- iron  gates  of  the  palace,  the  troops  were 
beginning  to  form,  for  it  was  already  known  that  the  bridge 
of  Sevres  had  been  left  unguarded  and  that  the  mob  was 
pouring  up  the  Paris  road.  The  troops  came  marching 
from  one  barrack  and  another  in  the  various  quarters  of  the 
town,  converging  upon  this  central  place,  and  some,  the 
Swiss,  were  issuing  from  the  outlets  of  the  palace  itself, 
and  some,  the  Mounted  Guard,  were  filing  out  of  the  half- 
moon  of  the  royal  stables,  where  now  the  Sappers  and  the 
22nd  of  Artillery  may  be  found.  They  formed  and  formed 
under  the  weather.  The  Body-guard  upon  their  great  horses, 
deeply  mantled  and  groomed  as  for  parade,  lined  all  the 
front;  behind  them  the  Swiss  on  foot  filled  the  square  of 


OCTOBER  297 

the  courtyard ;  Ragged  Flanders,  the  Ragged  Regiment  of 
Flanders,  famous  in  song  for  its  rags  as  for  its  amours  and 
its  drums,1  stood  by  companies  before  them  all  in  the  wide 
public  place,  where  all  the  roads  of  Versailles  converge  and 
make  an  approach  to  the  Court  and  form  an  open  centre  for 
the  royal  city. 

The  formation  was  accomplished,  food  was  served,  arms 
piled.  They  stood  there  in  rank  alone,  with  no  civilians 
to  watch  or  mock  them  under  the  rain,  and  behind  them  the 
great  house  they  were  guarding  stood  empty  of  Monarchy. 
And  before  them  the  wide  avenue  from  Paris,  the  Avenue, 
which  was  the  artery  of  opinion,  of  energy,  and  all  the 
national  being  at  that  moment,  stood  empty  also,  and  it 
rained  and  rained.  The  great  body  of  troops,  red,  yellow 
and  blue  in  bands,  were  the  only  tenants  of  the  scene. 


Within  the  Assembly  a  debate  not  over-full  of  purpose  had 
alternately  dragged  and  raged:  it  had  been  known  almost 
from  the  opening  of  the  sitting  that  Paris  would  move. 
Those  premonitions  which  have  led  the  less  scholarly  or 
the  more  fanatical  of  historians  to  see  in  the  Revolution  a 
perpetual  pre-arrangement  and  cabal,  those  warning  things 
in  the  air  which  you  find  at  every  stage  of  the  great  turmoil 
(rumours  flew  before  the  King  all  the  way  to  Varennes, 
and  the  victory  upon  the  right  wing  at  Wattignies  was 
known  in  Paris  an  hour  before  the  final  charge) ,  those  inex- 
plicable things  had  come,  and  immediately  upon  their  heels 
had  come  direct  news  from  one  messenger  after  another: 
how  the  wine  merchants'  shops  had  been  sacked,  how  the 
bridge  of  Sevres  was  passed,  how  the  rabble  were  now 

1  "¥'  avail  un  Grenadier,"  etc. 


298  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

but  five  miles  off  and  breasting  the  hill.  That  futility,  which 
the  Revolutionary  Assemblies  suffered  less  perhaps  than 
other  Parliaments,  but  which  is  inherent  in  all  representative 
discussion,  condemned  this  engine  of  the  new  Democracy  to 
discuss  on  such  a  day  nothing  of  greater  moment  than  the 

rder  of  that  day,  and  the  order  of  that  day  was  the  King's 
letter:  for  the  King  had  written  that  he  would  "accede"  to 
the  Decrees  (of  Rights  of  Man  and  to  the  extinction  of  the 
feudal  Dues),  but  that  he  would  not  "sanction"  them.  And 
on  the  verbal  discussion  between  the  words  "accede"  and 
the  word  "sanction"  legal  tomfoolery  was  fated  to  bat- 
ten, while  up  in  the  woods  of  Meudon  the  King  who 
had  written  that  letter  was  still  shooting  peacefully  and 
innocent  of  guile,  and  while  so  many  thousands,  desperately 
hungry,  were  marching  up  the  road  having  Maillard  —  as 
who  should  say  murder  —  for  their  Captain,  and  dragging 
behind  them  a  section  of  their  guns. 

From  such  futility  and  from  such  tomfoolery  the  debate 
was  just  saved  by  the  strength  of  personality  alone.  Moun- 
ier,  in  the  Speaker's  chair,  lent  energy  to  them  all,  though  of 
a  despairing  kind;  and  when  someone  had  said  to  him,  "All 
Paris  is  marching  upon  us,"  and  had  foreseen  the  invasion 
of  the  palace  and  perhaps  the  ruin  of  the  Crown,  he  had 
answered,  according  to  one  version,  "The  better  for  the 
Republic,"  according  to  another  version,  "  The  sooner  shall 
we  have  the  Republic  here." 

At  the  back  of  the  great  oblong  colonnaded  hall,  trim 
Robespierre,  fresh  from  the  Sign  of  the  Fox  and  from 
his  farmer  companions,  was,  in  that  vibrating  and  carrying 
little  voice  of  his,  laying  down  decisions.  There  should 
be  no  compromise ;  if  they  compromised  now  the  Revolution 
was  lost.  But  he  was  careful  to  be  strictly  in  order — 


OCTOBER  299 

he  was  always  careful  of  that  —  and  the  thing  on  which  he 
advised  "no  compromise"  was  not  the  mob,  but  the  letter 
of  the  King. 

A  larger  man  touched  nearer  to  the  life,  though  it  was  but 
an  interjection;  for  Mirabeau,  ever  vividly  grasping  facts^ 
and  things,  had  hinted  at  the  Queen :  that  mob  was  march- 
ing on  the  Queen.  He  had  said  that  he  would  sign  if,  in 
whatever  might  follow,  "The  King  alone  should  be  held 
inviolate."  And  there  is  one  witness  who  affirms  that  he 
added  in  a  whisper,  which  those  on  the  benches  about  him 
clearly  heard,  that  he  meant  specifically  to  exclude  from 
amnesty  and  from  protection  the  woman  against  whom  > 
so  many  and  such  varied  hatreds  had  now  converged,  and 
who  stood  to  a  million  men  for  innumerable  varied  reasons 
a  legendary  enemy,  but  one  in  her  flesh  and  blood  to  be 
hated — the  negation  of  all  the  hope  of  the  moment  and  of 
French  honour  and  of  the  national  will. 


This  woman,  upon  whom  already  lay  the  weight  of  so  much 
discontent  and  terror,  sat  that  morning  for  the  last  time  in 
Trianon,  where  the  rain  was  beating  against  Gabriel's  graceful, 
tall  windows  and  streaming  down  the  panes.  Some  ill-ease 
compelled  her,  though  the  place  was  protected,  remote  and 
silent,  and  though  the  weather  was  so  drear,  to  wander  in 
her  gardens  and  to  cross  the  paths  between  the  showers. 
In  the  early  afternoon  she  was  in  the  Grotto,  and  it  was 
there  that  the  news  came  to  her,  for  a  messenger  found  her 
also  as  that  other  one  had  found  her  husband.  He  bade 
her  come  at  once  to  the  palace  and  told  her  that  the  mob 
had  filled  the  town. 

She  came;  it  was  still  the  middle  afternoon, and  such  light 


SOO  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

as  the  day  afforded  was  still  full,  when  she  saw  from  the 
windows  of  the  ante-chamber,  looking  over  the  full  length  of 
the  courtyard,  beyond  the  line  of  soldiers,  that  eddying  vol- 
ume of  the  populace  and  heard  the  noise  of  their  mingled 
cries.  It  was  the  first  time  in  her  life  that  she  had  seen  the 
people  menacing.  She  listened  to  the  distant  roaring  for  a 
long  time  in  silence,  with  her  women  about  her,  until  the  noise 
of  horse  hoofs  clattered  upon  the  flags  below,  and  she  knew 
that  Louis  had  returned.  He  came,  booted  and  splashed, 
up  the  great  stairs;  there  members  of  his  Ministry  and 
his  advisers  were  ready.  Marie  Antoinette  entered  with 
them  into  the  Council  Room,  and  as  the  door  was 
shut  behind  her  there  was  shut  out,  though  barely  for  an 
hour,  the  instant  noise  of  that  peril. 

This  is  the  way  in  which  Paris  came  to  Versailles  and 
began  its  usurpation  of  the  Crown. 


There  is  a  tall  window  in  Versailles  in  the  corner  of  the 
Council  Room  whence  one  -can  see  the  courts  opening 
outwards  before  the  palace,  and  so  beyond  to  the  wide 
Place  d'Armes.  Through  that  window,  streaming  with 
rain  under  the  declining  light  of  the  pouring  October  day, 
could  be  seen  the  tumult. 

All  the  wide  enclosure  before  the  palace  was  guarded  and 
bare.  Over  its  wet  stones  came  and  went  only  hurried 
messengers — orderlies  from  the  armed  forces  or  servants  from 
the  Court.  Holding  the  long  300  yards  of  gilded  railing 
was  the  double  rank  of  the  Guards,  mounted,  swords 
drawn;  next  the  Dragoons,  a  clear  and  detached  line 
of  cavalry;  in  front  of  these,  in  triple  rank,  the  Regiment 
of  Flanders. 


OCTOBER  301 

Three  armed  bodies  thus  guarded  the  sweep  of  the  railings 
and  the  approach  to  the  palace  in  parallel  order,  and  beyond 
them,  right  into  the  depths  of  the  landscape,  marched  a 
vast  and  confused  mob  filling  up  the  three  great  avenues 
and  crowding  half  the  Place  d  'Armes ;  in  that  mob,  met  at 
first  in  formation  but  now  mingled  with  the  populace,  could 
be  distinguished  many  of  the  armed  Militia  of  Versailles. 
At  such  a  distance  no  distinct  voices  could  be  heard,  but 
roaring  sound  or  murmur  like  the  noise  of  a  beach  rose  from 
the  multitude  and  outweighed  the  furious  patter  of  the  rain 
on  the  glass:  at  rare  intervals  a  shot  was  fired,  wantonly, 
but  no  news  of  bloodshed  came.  From  time  to  time  a 
patrol  of  the  Guard  could  be  seen,  towering  on  chargers 
high  above  the  populace,  forcing  its  way  through;  swords 
also,  sometimes  striking,  could  be  distinguished.  This  uncer- 
tain and  menacing  sight,  blurred  in  the  rain,  was  all  that 
the  palace  could  distinguish. 

Within  the  King's  room  were  a  deputation  of  women  and 
Mounier,  the  President  of  the  Assembly,  had  been  received, 
council  upon  council  was  held,  that  the  Queen  at  least  should 
retire  to  some  neighbouring  town,  that  the  King  should 
fly  —  but  nothing  was  determined,  and  to  that  reiterated 
policy  of  flight  so  often  suggested  since  July,  now  so  press- 
ing, the  King  murmured  as  he  paced  back  and  forth,  "A 
King  in  flight!  ...  It  is  said  that  the  horses  were 

ordered;  but  with  every  moment  the  plan  became  more 
difficult.  Darkness  fell  upon  a  sky  still  stormy;  the  troops 
still  held  their  lines,  but  the  noises  seemed  nearer  and  more 
menacing.  It  was  imagined  better  to  withdraw  the  Guard 
at  least,  as  the  pressure  upon  them  increased. 

The  order  may  be  criticised,  but  it  may  also  be  defended. 
La  Fayette  was  marching  on  Versailles  from  Paris  with  a 


302  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

considerable  force  of  partly  trained  militia.  The  Guards 
round  whom  the  legend  of  the  supper  had  grown,  and  whose 
white  cockades  were  an  insult  to  the  national  colours,  exas- 
perated the  populace  beyond  bearing,  and  were,  it  was 
thought,  the  main  cause  of  the  pressure  to  which  the 
troops  were  subjected.  Wisely  or  foolishly,  the_Guard 
waswithdrawn,  the  line  regiments  alone  were  left^Jto 
contain  the  liiob . 

~^Ir  wasT  eighrVclock,  and  for  two  hours  further  a  futile 
deliberation  proceeded  in  the  royal  rooms.  In  those  hours 
first  one  messenger  then  another  convinced  the  King  of  a 
thing  inconceivable  in  those  days — personal  danger  to  himself 
and  especially  to  the  Queen.  At  ten  o'clock  he  signed  the 
Decrees,  the  refusal  of  which  were  thought  to  be  the 

litical  cause  of  the  tumult.  At  midnight  could  be  heard 
at  last  the  regular  marching  of  drilled  men:  La  Fayette 
had  arrived  with  20,000  from  Paris  —  not  soldiers,  if 
you  will,  men  of  but  three  months'  training,  but  in 
uniform,  capable  of  formation  and  well  armed  —  the 
]\felUia  of  Paris. 

So  profound  was  the  mental  distance  between  the  sur- 
roundings of  the  King  and  the  leaders  of  the  reform  that  not 
a  few  at  Court  feared  this  relieving  force,  thinking  that  such 
a  man  as  La  Fayette  might  be  tempted  to  capture  the  Mon- 
archy with  it  and  to  betray  it  to  the  mob !  They  understood 
him  little.  He  showed  that  night  some  statesmanship,  great 
activity,  and  an  admirable  devotion  to  duty:  it  was  his 
judgment  that  failed.  He  judged  falsely  of  what  the  crowd 
were  capable;  he  underestimated^ his  countrymen  and  he 
judged  falsely  of  what  hisjMililia  could  do;  he  overestimated 
uniforms  and  an  imperfect  drill.  He  urged  that  the  regular 
troops,  the  pressure  upon  whom  after  all  these  hours  was  now 


OCTOBER  303 

almost  intolerable,  should  be  withdrawn;  he  further  urged 
that  he  should  be  permitted  with  his  Militia  and  with  some 
few  of  the  Guard  to  police  the  open  spaces  and  to  protect  the 
palace.  V 

His  advice — the  advice  of  the  only  man  with  a  large  armeo!/ 
force  behind  him  —  was  accepted.  By  two  o'clock  there  was 
silence  and,  as  it  was  thought,  security.  Men  slept  as  they 
could  in  such  shelter  as  they  might  find  or  in  the  open.  Far 
off  there  was  the  glare  of  a  fire  where,  in  the  midst  of  the 
crowd,  a  wounded  horse  had  keen  killed  and  was  roasting 
for  food.  The  hubbub  within  the  palace  had  died  down; 
nothing  was  heard  but  the  rhythmic  clank  of  a  sentry,  or, 
as  the  hours  passed,  the  challenge  of  a  relief.  The  Queen 
also  slept. 

What  followed  has  been  told  a  thousand  times.  Her 
great  bedroom  looked  east  and  south;  it  was  the  chief 
room  in  her  wing,  which,  just  beyond  the  central  court,  corre- 
sponded to  the  King's  upon  the  northern  side.  From  that 
room  to  the  Council  Chamber  and  to  the  King's  private 
apartments  there  were  three  ways:  the  way  by  the  main 
gallery  of  mirrors  which  her  household  took  upon  Sunday 
mornings  and  on  all  sorts  of  grand  occasions  to  join  the  King 
for  High  Mass.  A  second  shorter  way  through  little  rooms 
at  the  back,  which  were  her  own  private  cabinets ;  and  thirdly, 
a  half-secret  passage  worked,  now  in  the  thickness  of  a  floor, 
now  in  the  space  between  two  floors,  and  leading  directly 
from  the  King's  room  to  her  own. 

All  that  afternoon  and  evening  the  new  strength  of  her 
character  had  conspicuously  appeared.  Her  friends,  and 
her  enemies,  remarked  it  equally.  There  was  something 
in  her  almost  serene  during  these  first  experiences  of  peril ; 
but  they  were  to  grow  far  more  severe.  Her  children  she 


304  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

had  sent  into  the  King's  wing.  She  was  assured  of  peace 
at  least  until  morning,  and  she  slept.1 

Farther  along  than  the  tall  chapel  whose  roof  so  dominates 
Versailles,  towards  what  is  now  the  limit  of  the  Hotel  of 
the  Reservoirs,  in  the  court  which  is  called  that  of  the 
Opera  House,  one  of  the  great  iron  gates  which  gave  entry 
into  the  palace  grounds  stood  open  on  that  gusty  night  of 
rain.  A  single  sentinel  chosen,  from  the  Militia,  stood  before 
it.  By  this  gate  not  a  few  of  the  crowd  found  their  way 
into  the  palace  gardens,  and,  coming  to  the  Southern  wing, 
vaguely  knew,  though  the  interior  of  the  place  was  doubtful 
to  them,  that  they  stood  beneath  the  windows  of  the  Queen. 

Marie  Antoinette  had  slept  perhaps  three  hours  when  she 
/  awoke  to  hear  cries  and  curses  against  her  name,  and  staring 
in  the  bewildered  moment  which  succeeds  the  oblivion  of 
sleep  she  saw  that  it  was  dawn.  Then  next  she  heard  some- 
where, confused,  far  off,  in  the  centre  of  the  buildings,  a  noise 
of  thousands  and  cries.  Her  maid  threw  a  petticoat  upon 
her  and  a  mantle,  and  delayed  her  a  perilous  moment  that 
she  might  have  stockings  on  as  she  fled.  She  made  for  the 
private  rooms  that  would  take  her  to  the  King's  wing,  when, 
as  the  noise  of  the  invading  mob  grew  louder  and  their  leaders 
(missing  her  door)  poured  on  clamouring  to  find  and  to 
kill  her,  one  of  her  Guards  half  opened  the  door  of  her 
room  and  cried,  "Save  the  Queen!"  The  butt  of  a  musket 
felled  him:  the  Queen  was  already  saved. 

The  violence  of  those  who  thus  poured  past  her  door  found 
no  victim.  She  had  run  through  her  little  library  and 
boudoir,  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  (Eil  de  Bceuf  and  had  it 
hurriedly  opened  to  her :  she  had  knocked  and  knocked  and 
someone  had  opened  the  door  fearfully  and  shut  it  again 

1  Fersen  was  in  the  palace  that  night.    It  has  been  affirmed  that  he  was  with  her.    The  story  is  certainly 
false 


OCTOBER  305 

when  she  had  passed  through.  She  saw  the  (Eil  de  Bceuf 
barricaded.  A  handful  of  the  Guard  went  desperately  piling 
up  chairs,  sofas  and  footstools  against  the  outer  doors,  while 
she  slipped  through  to  the  King's  room.  He  meanwhile,  as 
the  assault  on  the  palace  had  awakened  him  also,  had  run 
along  the  secret  passage  to  her  room,  and,  seeing  it  empty, 
had  come  back  to  find  her  in  his  own. 

The  eruption  of  the  mob  had  been  as  rapid  as  the  bursting 
of  a  storm.  The  immediate  forming  of  the  La  Fayette's 
Militia  Guard  and  its  victory  proved  almost  as  rapid.  The 
first  shot  had  been  fired  at  six,  probably  by  one  of  the  Guards 
at  the  central  door:  within  an  hour  the  Militia  had  cleared 
the  rabble  out,  even  the  tenacious  pillagers  were  dislodged 
and  the  populace  stood,  thrust  outside  the  doors  and  massed 
in  the  narrow  marble  court  beneath  the  King's  windows, 
in  part  discomfited  but  much  more  angry,  and  with  a  policy 
gradually  shaping  in  the  common  mouth :  a  policy  expressed 
in  cries  that  "they  would  see  the  King,"  that  "the  King  was 
their  King,"  that  "they  must  bring  back  the  King  to  Paris." 

The  morning  had  broken  clear  and  fine  and  quite  calm 
after  the  rain  of  yesterday  and  the  wind  of  the  night;  its 
light  increased  with  the  advancing  hours:  the  energy  of  the 
mob  remained — and  in  the  midst  of  it  a  long-bearded  man, 
half-mad,  an  artist's  model,  was  hacking  off  the  heads  of  the 
two  Guards  who  had  been  killed  when  the  palace  was  rushed. 

The  Queen  looked  down  upon  the  flood  of  the  people  from 
the  windows  of  her  husband's  room.  Her  sister-in-law 
was  at  her  shoulder,  her  little  daughter  close  to  her  left  side, 
arid  in  front  of  her,  standing  upon  a  chair,  the  Dauphin  was 
playing  with  his  sister's  hair  and  complaining  that  he  was 
hungry :  and  all  the  while  the  mob  shouted  for  the  King. 

The  King  showed  himself.     They  would  see  the  Queen 


306  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

too :  and  La  Fayette,  still  their  adviser  and  still  trusted  in  a 
bewildered  way  as  a  sort  of  saviour,  told  her  it  was  impera- 
tive that  she  should  come.  She  went,  therefore,  to  the  great 
central  room  of  all  that  house,  the  room  which  had  been  the 
state  bedroom  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  stepped  out  upon  the 
balcony  of  its  central  window,  holding  her  children  by  the 
hand.  The  mob  roared  that  they  would  have  no  children 
there.  She  waved  them  back  into  the  room,  and  stood  for 
some  moments  surveying  the  anger  of  the  unhappy  thousands 
packed  beneath,  with  the  new  and  serene  day  rising  in  the 
eastern  heaven  behind  them.  Her  hands  were  on  the  rail 
of  the  balcony.  She  hardly  moved.  There  were  weapons 
raised  in  the  tumbling  crowd:  one  man  aimed  at  her  and 
then  lowered  his  musket.  La  Fayette  came  forward,  took 
her  right  hand,  knelt  and  kissed  it,  and  the  little  scene 
was  over. 

How  could  she  have  known  until  that  moment  that  there 

^were  such  things  ? 

It  was  certain  more  and  more  as  the  day  grew  to  noon 

(  that  the  Court  must  obey  and  that  the  populace  had  morally 
conquered.  In  a  little  inner  room  the  King  and  Queen  sat 
together,  and  together  they  decided  (or,  the  King  deciding, 
she  could  not  but  decide  in  the  same  necessity)  that  they 
would  return  to  Paris.  She  turned  to  her  husband  and  said : 
" Promise^iie~at  least  this:  that  when  next  such  an  occasion 
shall  come,  you  will  fly  while  yet  there  is  time."  Louis,  to 
whom  the  idea  of  flight  was  hateful,  let  his  eyes  fill  with  tears, 
but  did  not  answer. 


Louis'  decision  to  return  was  a  wise  decision.     The  popu- 
I  lar  demand  was  not  to  constrain  but  to  possess  their  King. 


OCTOBER  307 

It  was  not  until  later  that  the  changing  mood  of  Paris  and  its 
success  seemed  to  make  of  that  moment  of  October  the 
beginning  of  the  King's  captivity;  with  some  little  difference 
in  persons  and  in  wills,  this  yielding  to  what  all  the  national 
sentiment  demanded  might  even  yet  have  made  of  the 
Crown  once  more  an  active  national  emblem  and  of  the 
person  of  the  King  a  leader. 

It  was  half-past  one  when  the  carriages  with  difficulty 
came  to  the  palace.  It  was  two  before  the  march  to  Paris 
began. 

The  road  from  Versailles  to  Paris  falls  and  falls  down  a 
long  easy  valley  which  the  woods  still  clothe  on  either  side 
of  the  very  broad  and  royal  highway :  the  woods  rose  in  that 
autumn  dense  and  unbroken  for  many  miles.  Two  things 
contrasted  powerfully  one  against  the  other:  the  howling 
turbulence  of  the  crowd,  the  stillness  of  nature  all  around. 
It  was  as  though  some  sort  of  astonishment  had  struck  the 
trees  and  the  pure  sky:  or  as  though  these  were  spectators 
standing  apart  and  watching  what  tempests  can  arise  in  the 
mind  of  man. 

The  season  was  late;  the  foliage  was  but  just  turning; 
the  gorgeous  leaves  hung  tremulous  in  that  still  air:  none 
fell.  The  masses  of  colour  in  the  thickets  of  Viroflay  were 
tapestried  and  immovable;  and  all  this  silence  of  the  world 
was  soft  as  well.  The  air  had  about  it  that  tender,  half- 
ironical  caress  which  it  possesses  on  perfect  autumn  days 
in  the  Parisis,  and  the  sky  was  of  that  misty  but  contented 
blue  which  they  know  very  well  who  have  wandered  in  that 
valley  upon  such  days.  Cleaving  through  such  beatitude, 
a  long  line  of  shrieking  and  of  clamouring,  of  laughter  and 
of  curses,  of  the  shrill  complaints  of  women,  of  the  moans 
of  pain  and  of  fatigue,  mixed  with  the  sudden  wanton 


308  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

discharge    of    muskets,   went,    for    mile    after    mile;    the 
populace  drawing  back  their  King  to  Paris. 

It  is  not  seven  miles  from  the  Palace  to  the  river  —  not 
another  four  to  what  were  then  the  barriers  of  the  city. 
They  took  for  these  eleven  miles  all  but  seven  hours.  The 
coaches  crawled  and  pushed  through  the  swarm  of  the  angry 
poor.  The  Queen,  her  husband  and  her  children,  Monsieur, 
Madame  Elizabeth,  the  governess  of  the  royal  children  - 
all  sat  together  in  one  great  coach  rumbling  along  in  the  midst 
of  insult  and  of  intolerable  noise.  From  where  she  sat,  facing 
the  horses  near  the  window,  the  Queen  could  see  far  off  at 
the  head  of  that  interminable  column  two  pikes  slanting  in 
the  air.  The  heads  of  the  Guards  who  had  saved  her  were 
upon  them.1  She  could  see  here  and  there,  close  under  those 
trophies,  glints  of  yellow,  where  certain  of  the  Foot  Guards 
were  marched  like  prisoners  along,  with  the  blue  of  the 
national  Militia,  flanking  and  escorting  them  on  either  side ; 
and,  mixed  in  the  crowd,  the  Mounted  Guardsmen  were 
there,  prisoners  also,  with  the  Mounted  Militia  holding  them. 
Of  all  that  followed  after,  she  could  see  nothing  but  she 
could  hear.  There  was  the  rumbling  of  the  wheels  of  the 
two  cannon,  the  great  sixty  waggons  loaded  with  flour, 
and  she  could  hear  the  cries  that  cursed  her  own  name. 
The  afternoon  wore  on.  The  sun  lay  low  over  the 
palace  they  had  left ;  it  was  dusk  by  the  time  they  reached 
the  river;  it  was  dark  before  they  came  to  the  barriers 
of  the  town. 

There,  by  the  same  gate  of  entry  wrhich  the  first  of  the 
Bourbons  had  traversed  two  hundred  years  before,  the 
Monarchy  re-entered  that  capital  which,  for  precisely  a 
century,  it  had,  with  a  fatal  lack  of  national  instinct,  aban- 

1  Or  else  they  were  not:  there  are  two  versions. 


OCTOBER  309 

doned.  Bailly,  the  Mayor,  met  them  under  torches  in  the 
darkness  and  presented  the  keys  of  the  city.  The  Royal 
Family  must  needs  go  on,  late  as  it  was  and  they  lacking 
food,  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  that  the  crowds  of  the  city  might 
see  them.  It  was  not  until  ten  o'clock  that  the  unhappy 
household,  the  little  children  broken  by  such  hours  and  so 
much  fasting,  found  themselves  at  last  under  the  roof  of 
the  Tuileries. 

The  Tuileries  were  a  barracks. 

The  huge  empty  line  of  buildings,  which,  had  they  been 
thus  abandoned  to-day,  would  have  been  made  a  Sunday 
show,  had  in  that  age  been  put  to  no  use;  they  had  become 
in  the  absence  of  the  Court  but  a  warren  of  large  deserted 
rooms.  Furniture  was  wanting;  there  was  dust  and  negli- 
gence everywhere;  the  discomfort,  the  indignity,  the  friction, 
were  but  increased  by  the  hasty  swarms  of  workmen 
who  had  been  turned  on  in  a  few  hours  to  fit  the  place  for 
human  living.  No  more  exact  emblem  of  the  divorce 
between  the  Crown  and  Paris  could  be  found  than  the 
inner  ruin  of  that  royal  town  house,  nor  could  any 
deeper  lesson  have  been  conveyed  —  had  the  last  of 
the  Bourbons  but  heeded  it  —  than  the  reproach  of 
those  rooms.  >. 

As  for  Paris  —  Paris  believed  it  had  recovered  the  King,) 
The  month  and  more  that  followed  was  filled  with  a  series  of 
receptions  and  of  plaudits.  The  Bar,  the  University,  the 
Treasury,  last  of  all  the  Academy  —  all  the  great  bodies  of 
the  State  were  received  in  audience  and  joined  in  a  general 
welcome.  Parliament  was  at  work  again  before  the  end  of 
the  month,  first  in  the  Archbishop's  palace  upon  the 
Island,  later  in  the  great  oval  manege  or  riding-school 
which  lay  along  the  north  of  the  palace  gardens.  It 


310  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

was  there  that  all  the  drama  of  the  Revolution  was  to 
be  played.1 

That  drama  began  to  work,  as  winter  advanced  with  a  new, 
a  more  organised,  and,  as  it  were,  a  more  fatal  rapidity; 
and  as  the  volume  of  the  reform  grew  and  its  momentum 
also  rose,  the  Queen  sank  back  further  and  further  into  the 
recesses  of  her  religion . 

Her  energy  was  not  diminished.  Those  few  months  of 
silence  did  but  restore  her  power  to  act  with  speed  and  even 
with  violence  in  the  succeeding  year,  but  for  the  moment, 
like  a  sort  of  foil  to  the  speed  of  the  current  around  her,  she 
steadfastly  regarded  Jhe  only  things  that  remain  to  the 
doomed  or  the  destitute. 

The  communion  of  her  daughter  chiefly  concerned  her 
then.  To  this  it  was  that  she  looked  forward  in  the  com- 
ing spring,  and  this  (insignificant  as  the  matter  may  seem 
to  those  who  know  little  of  such  minds)  was  the  fixed  interest 
of  that  winter  for  the  Queen. 

Her  letters  during  those  months  betray  that  momentary 
isolation.  She  inclined  once  more,  after  the  tumults  and 
defeats,  to  a  not  very  worthy  contempt  for  the  slow,  insuffi- 
cient, and  absolutely  just  mind  of  her  husband.  There  are 
phrases  of  violence  like  the  sudden  small  flames  of  banked 
fires  in  those  letters  of  hers  in  that  season ;  but  her  reserve 
remains  absolute.  She  boasts  that  she  "had  seen  death 
from  near  by."  But  "she  will  keep  to  her  plan  and  not 
meddle."  "My  business  is  to  see  the  King  at  ease."  Then 
again,  later,  in  Lent  she  sneers:  "One  at  my  side  is  prepared 
to  take  things  in  a  modest  way."  She  follows  with  a  phrase 

*  Those  curious  to  retrace  the  very  sites  of  history,  may  care  to  know  exactly  where  the  manege  stood, 
since  in  the  manege,  as  a  great  phrase  goes,  "La  France  fit  I'eternel."  The  major  axis  of  its  ellipse  corre- 
sponded to  the  pavement  to  the  north  of  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  under  the  Arcades,  and  the  centre  of  this  axis  was 
where  the  Rue  Castiglione  now  falls  into  the  Rue  de  Rivoli.  Its  southern  wall  slightly  overlapped  the  line  of 
the  present  railing  of  the  Tuileries  Gardens;  its  northern  was  about  In  a  line  with  the  northern  limit  of  the 
property  now  occupied  by  the  Continental  Hotel. 


OCTOBER  311 

that  is  reminiscent  of  the  audacity  she  so  recently  showed 
and  was  again  so  soon  to  show:  "/  shall  not  let  the  power 
of  the  Throne  go  at  so  cheap  a  rate."  This  letter,  which, 
read  to-day  after  so  many  years,  breathes  the  too  jagged 
vigour  of  the  woman,  has  about  it  an  awful  character; 
for  she  wrote  it  to  a  man  who,  even  as  she  wrote  it,  was  lying 
dead;  her  brother  and  her  mainstay,  the  Emperor.  The 
desire  to  return  to  the  arena  is  still  in  her:  she  writes  once, 
wistfully,  "I  must  get  hold  of  the  leaders."  There  are  other 
letters,  passionate,  womanish  letters  to  her  woman  friends. 
To  Madame  de  Polignac,  out  in  exile  at  Parma,  letter  after 
letter.  In  these,  as  in  all  the  rest,  you  read  her  jpsfapt.  of  serku. 
sion  from  the  fight.  That  interval  was  one  of  five  months. 

SheTn  those  five  months,  from  the  Days  of  the  Dead  in 
November,  1789,  to  the  very  early  Easter  of  1790,  was  like  an 
athlete  who,  in  the  midst  of  some  furious  game,  stands  apart 
for  a  moment  recovering  his  breath  and  relaxing  his  muscles 
while  the  struggle  grows  more  active,  separate  from  him,  but 
acted  before  his  eyes.  Soon  he  will  re-enter  the  press  with  a 
renewed  vigour.  And  so  did  she  when  after  that  sad  winter 
she  combined  with  Mirahejm,  and  the  driving  force  in  those 
"two  minds  tried  to  work  in  a  yoke  together.  But  for  the  rest, 
I  say,  religion  chiefly  held  her.  Her  isolation  was  not  so 
much  a  plan  (as  she  pretended)  as  a  physical  and  necessary 
thing.  She  was  exhausted.  She  had  done  with  the  body 
for  a  moment.  She  was  concerned  with  the  soul. 

If  one  could  portray  graphically  the  accidents  of  that 
tragic  life,  if  a  mould  could  be  taken  of  her  great  hopes  and 
her  great  sufferings,  if  a  cast  in  relief  could  be  made  of 
her  passion,  you  would  find,  I  think,  in  such  a  map  of  her 
existence  two  high  peaks  of  exalted  suffering  and  vision: 
the  death  of  her  son  —  so  small  in  history,  so  great  to  her  — 


312  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

would  be  the  first;  and  the  second  would  be  those  hours  in 
October  when  she,  to  whom  such  all  such  things  had  been 
mere  words,  was  first  in  her  wealthy  life  threatened  with  cold 
air  against  her  body,  the  vulgar  in  her  bedroom,  and  death; 
when  she  first  saw  a  weapon  levelled  at  her  and  first  came 
in  physical  contact  with  violence,  a  thing  that  all  save  the 
wealthy  and  their  parasites  daily  know.  These  were  the 
two  strong,  new,  and  terrible  days  which  had  bitten  into  her 
experience.  These  were  and  remained  her  isolated  mem- 
ories. The  rest,  her  future  evils,  came  by  a  more  gradual  slope : 
her  very  death  was  to  her  less  enormous.  Her  dumbness 
during  these  winter  months  of  '89  and  the  working  inwards  of 
her  life  was  a  reaction  of  repose  after  the  shock  of  October. 
By  the  vast  mass  of  the  Louvre  there  is  a  church  dedicated 
to  that  Saint  Germanus  who  preached  against  Pelagius  in 
Britain,  and  who,  as  an  old  man,  had  laid  his  hand  upon  the 
head  of  the  young  Saint  Genevieve,  the  goose-girl,  near 
Mount  Valerian  and  had  foreseen  her  glory.  This  church 
has  much  history.  From  its  tower  rang  the  call  to  arms 
which  roused  the  populace  of  Paris  against  the  wealthy 
oppressor  of  the  Huguenot  faction  and  maddened  the  poor 
to  take  their  revenge  in  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew. 
It  was  and  is  the  parish  church  of  the  palace.  Here,  before 
Lent  was  over  (upon  Wednesday  in  Holy  Week),  the  little 
girl,  her  daughter,  knelt  at  her  first  communion.  The 
Queen  stood  and  knelt  in  the  darkness  of  the  nave,  dressed 
without  ornament,  her  fine  head  serious,  her  commanding 
eyes  at  once  tender  and  secure. 


I  cannot  write  of  her  or  hear  of  her  without  remembering 
her  thus;    and  that  last  power  of  hers,  a  power  made  of 


OCTOBER  31. '5 

abrupt  vivacity  tamed  at  last  by  misfortune  into  dignity  j 
and  strength,  here,  I  think,  begins.  Such  a  power  was  not  i 
henceforward  the  permanent  quality  of  her  soul — far  from 
it  -  -  but  it  appeared  and  reappeared.  It  was  strong 
more  than  once  for  a  moment  in  the  last  hours  before  she 
died  .  .  .  and  how  well  one  sees  why  such  as  had 
perceived  in  her  the  seeds  of  this  force  of  the  spirit,  even 
when  she  was  distraught  and  played  the  fool  in  youth, 
now,  when  it  had  blossomed,  worshipped  her!  Upon 
this  last  mood  her  legend  is  built  and  survives.  She  had 
a  regal  head. 


She  stood  in  the  nave  unnoticed  in  her  black  dress  with- 
out ornament,  and  saw  the  little  girl  go  up  in  white  and  veiled 
to  the  altar-rails.  There  was  no  one  there.  Never  since 
Constantine  had  the  Faith  been  lower  in  France;  but  the 
Faith  is  a  thing  for  the  individual  mind  and  not  for 
majorities. 

They  went  back  homewards.     They  gave  alms. 

Meanwhile,  though  this  was  her  true  life  for  those  months, 
one  must  speak  of  what  went  on  without :  the  rising  of  the 
Revolutionary  song  and  the  noises  at  her  feet.  For  out  of 
this  swelling  energy  and  increasing  peril  was  to  grow  her 
experiment  of  an  alliance  with  the  virile  brain  of  Mirabeau. 

There  stands,  side  by  side  with  the  activity  of  mortal  life, 
a  silent  thing  commonly  unseen  and,  even  if  seen,  despised. 
It  has  no  name,  unless  its  name  be  religion:  its  form  is  the 
ritual  of  the  altar;  its  philosophy  is  despised  under  the  title 
of  Theology.  This  thing  and  its  influence  should  least 
of  all  appear  in  the  controversies  of  a  high  civilisation. 
With  an  irony  that  every  historian  of  whatever  period  must 


314  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

have  noted  a  hundred  times,  this  thing  and  its  influence 
perpetually  intervene,  when  most  society  is  rational  and 
when  most  it  is  bent  upon  positive  things ;  and  now  at  the 
moment  when  the  transformation  of  society  towards  such 
better  things  seemed  so  easy  and  the  way  so  plain,  now  in  late 
'89,  before  any  threat  had  come  from  the  King  or  any  danger 
of  dissolution  from  within,  this  thing,  this  influence,  entered 
unnoticed  by  a  side-door;  it  was  weak  and  almost  dumb. 
It  and  it  alone  halted  and  still  halts  all  the  Revolutionary 
work,  for  it  should  have  been  recognised  and  it  was  not.  It 
demanded  its  place  and  no  place  was  given  it.  There  is  a 
divine  pride  about  it  and,  as  it  were,  a  divine  necessity  of 
vengeance.  Religion,  if  it  be  slighted,  if  it  be  misunder- 
stood, will  implacably  destroy. 

It  was  the  Queen's  birthday,  the  Day  of  the  Dead, 
November  2,  1789,  one  of  those  fatal  and  recurrent  dates 
to  which  her  history  is  pinned,  which  saw  the  sowing  of 
that  seed  and  the  little  entry  of  what  was  to  become  the 
major  and  perhaps  the  unending  feud  of  our  modern 
democracies. 

The  clergy  of  the  French  Church  were*  then  national  to  a 
degree  hitherto  unknown  in  the  history  of  the  Church  in  any 
of  her  provinces.  The  national  movement  swept  them  all. 
The  Episcopacy  represented,  in  some  few  of  the  greatest 
sees  the  Revolutionary  enthusiasms,  in  the  mass  of  bishops 
the  resistance  to  the  Revolution  which  was  exactly  parallel 
to  the  attitude  of  the  lay  nobility.  The  parish  clergy 
reflected  with  exact  fidelity  the  homogeneous  will  of  the 
nation.  It  was  a  priest  who  furnished  the  notes  of  the 
Revolutionary  movement  in  the  capital  of  Normandy. 
Later  it  was  a  priest  who  wrote  the  last  (and  the  only  liter- 
ary) stanza  of  the  Marseillaise.  Even  the  religious,  or  what 


OCTOBER  315 

was  left  of  them  (for  monastic  life  had  never  fallen  to  a  lower 
state  or  one  more  dead  since  first  St. Martin  had  brought  it 
into  Gaul),  met  the  movement  in  a  precisely  similar  fashion, 
suspected  it  in  proportion  to  their  privilege  or  their  wealth, 
welcomed  it  in  proportion  to  their  knowledge  of  the  people 
and  their  mixing  with  them.  It  was  the  poor  remnant  of 
the  Dominicans  of  Paris  that  received  and  housed  and  gave 
its  name  to  the  headquarters  of  pure  democracy,  the 
Jacobins. 

The  clergy,  then,  were  but  the  nation.  The  long  cam- 
paign against  the  Faith,  which  had  so  long  been  the  business 
of  the  Huguenot,  the  Deist,  the  Atheist,  and  the  Jew,  had 
indeed  brought  the  Faith  very  near  to  death,  and,  as  has  so 
often  been  insisted  in  the  course  of  these  pages,  it  is  difficult 
for  a  modern  man  to  conceive  how  tiny  was  the  little  flicker- 
ing flame  of  Catholicism  in  the  generation  before  the 
Revolution,  for  he  is  used  to  it  to-day  as  a  great  combative 
advancing  thing  against  which  every  effort  of  its  enemies' 
energies  must  be  actively  and  constantly  used.  The  clergy 
as  a  body  of  men  were  national  and  willing  to  aid  the  nation ; 
the  Faith,  which  should  have  been  their  peculiar  business, 
had  almost  gone  —  therefore  it  was  that  to  put  to  national 
uses  what  seemed  the  grossly  exaggerated  endowments  of 
religion  seemed  a  national  policy  in  that  embarrassed  time. 
Therefore  it  was  that  the  endowments  so  attacked  could  ill 
defend  themselves,  for  the  philosophy  of  their  defence,  which 
lay  in  their  religion,  was  forgotten.  Obviously  necessary 
and  patriotic  as  the  policy  seemed,  it  awoke  that  influence 
of  which  I  speak,  which  does  not  reside  in  men  and  which 
is  greater  than  men,  which  only  acts  through  men,  but 
is  not  of  them;  and  Religion  —  seemingly  all  but  dead  — 
rose  at  once  when  it  felt  upon  it  the  gesture  of  the  civil  power. 


316  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


316 
It 


was,  I  have  said,  the  2nd  of  November,  the  Queen's 
|  birthday,  the  Day  of  the  Dead,  that  the  vote  was  taken  upon 
/.  the  Confiscation  of  religious  endowments.     The  light  was 
railing  as  that  vole  began,     'rhe  candelabra  of  the  great 
riding-school  were  lit,  and  it  was  full  darkness  before  the 
vote  was  ended,  for  five-sixths  of  all  possible  votes  were  cast 
and  nearly  one  thousand  men  voted  each  to  the  call  of  his 
name  upon  a  roll.     When  the  figures  were  read,  a  majority 
of  222  had  decided  the  thing,  and,  in  deciding  it,  had  deter- 
.mined  the  dual  fortunes  of  Europe  thenceforward  to  our 
|  own  time.     The   Revolution,  a  thing  inconceivable   apart 
from  the  French  inheritance,  Catholic  Dogma,  had  raised  an 
tissue  against  the  Catholic  Church.      For  three  weeks  had 
the  matter  been  debated ;  the  days  of  October  had  launched 
it,  and  while  yet  the  Parlement  was  in  Versailles  a  bishop  — 
one  later  to  be  famous   under  his   own  name  of  Talley- 
rand —  had  moved  in  favour  of  that  Act. 

It  was  a  simple  plan,  and  to  see  how  immediate  and 
necessary  it  seemed  we  have  but  to  read  the  figures  of  the 
clerical  funds  and  of  their  iniquitous  distribution;  yet  it 
failed  altogether  and  had  for  its  effect  only  one  effect  much 
larger  than  any  one  dreamt  —  the  creation  of  enmity  in  the 
only  Thing  that  could  endure,  indefinitely  opposed  to  the 
Revolution,  mobile,  vigorous,  and  with  a  life  as  long  or 
longer  than  its  own. 

The  figures  were  these:  In  a  nation  of  25  milliojis  now 
raising,  by  a  grinding  and  most  unpopular  taxation,  less  than 
18,000,000  in  the  year,  and  of  that  paying  quite  one-half  as 
interest  upon  a  hopeless  and  increasing  debt  was  present  a 
body  of  men,  40,000  in  number,  whose  revenues  had  always 
been  considered  as  the  retribution  of  a  particular  function  now 
\ universally  disregarded;  and  these  revenues  would  almost 


OCTOBER  317 

suffice  to  pay  the  amount  which  would  save  the  nation  fronf 
bankruptcy.  The  property  from  which  these  revenues  were 
derived  was  sufficient  to  cancel  the  debt  and  to  set  the  nation 
free  upon  a  new  course  of  readjusted  taxation,  an  increased 
and  unencumbered  activity  and,  as  it  seemed  to  all  at  that 
moment,  to  save  the  State.  Talleyrand  himself  in  his  clear 
and  chiselled  speech  put  the  matter  with  the  precision  of  a 
soldier.  The  reform  would  wipe  out  all  encumbrances^ 
permit  the  destruction  of  the  old  and  hateful  taxes,  notably 
the  salt  tax,  suppress  the  purchase  of  public  offices,  and 
meanwhile  permit  the  nation  in  its  new  course  to  pay  without 
grievous  burden  regular  salaries  to  the  clergy  as  civil  servants 
according  to  their  rank,  which  salaries  would  abolish  t 
gross  inequalities  which  had  arisen  in  the  economic  develop- 
ment of  fifteen  centuries.  No  ordained  priest  would  have 
less  than  what  was  in  those  days  regarded  as  a  sufficient 
maintenance.  The  monstrous  revenues  of  certain  sees 
which  were  of  no  service  to  Religion  or  to  the  State,  would 
disappear. 

The  plan  was  simple,  it  seemed  most  rational,  and,  as  I 
have  said,  it  was  voted — from  it  was  to  proceed  directly 
within  two  months  the  creation  of  those  Government  notes 
upon  the  security  of  Church  lands,  whose  very  name  is  for 
us  to-day  a  summary  of  the  disaster  —  the.  Assignats :  the 
Assignats,  which  have  become. a  cant  term  for  worthless 
paper.  Before  Christmas  that  ominous  word  was  to  appear. 
Before  spring  the  false  step  of  dissolving  the  moribund 
religious  orders  was  to  be  taken.  Before  summer  the  plan 
to  establish  a  national  Church  controlled  by  the  State! 
was  to  be  formulated ;  within  a  year  that  simple  plan  of  dis- 
endowment  had  bred  schism  and  the  fixed  resistance  of  the 
King,  later  it  engendered  Vendee,  Normandy,  all  the  civil 


318  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

wars,  and  --  with  a  rending  that  has  all  but  destroyed  Europe 
-  a  separation  between  the  two  chief  appetites  native  to 
mankind,  the  hunger  for  justice  in  the  State,  and  that  other 
hunger  for  God,  who  is  the  end  of  the  soul.  The  wound  is 
not  yet  healed. 

Such  was  the  principal  act  passing  during  those  months 
of  the  winter  and  spring  under  the  eyes  of  the  Queen  in  her 
retirement  and  silence;  accompanying  that  act  was  much 
more.  The  first  of  the  plots  had  broken  out,  the  first  of 
those  recurrent  and  similar  plots  for  saving  the  person  of  the 
King;  the  first  of  the  victims,  Favras,  had  been  hanged; 
the  first  hint,  therefore,  of  a  distinction  between  the  King  as 
head  of  the  nation  and  the  King  as  a  person  to  be  preserved 
had  appeared.  It  was  to  grow  until  it  threw  into  the  whirl- 
pool of  the  Revolution  the  flight  to  Varennes. 

Just  before  the  end  of  February  the  force  upon  which 
Marie  Antoinette  now  most  relied  — her  brother  Joseph  - 
died.  Leopold,  a  character  of  no  such  readiness  or  matur- 
ity, succeeded  him,  and  the  Queen,  reading  his  letter  upon  the 
27th,  knew  that  she  had  come  to  that  turn  of  human  life  after 
which,  even  for  the  most  blest,  everything  is  loss  without 
replacement,  until  we  stand  alone  at  the  tomb.  Even  for  the 
most  blest :  for  her  the  turn  had  come  just  as  she  and  all  of 
hers  must  sail  into  the  darkness  of  a  great  storm. 

I  have  said  that  it  was  on  the  last  day  of  March,  Spy 

Wednesday,  that  she  had  stood  obscure  in  her  plain  black, 

blotted  against  the  darkness  of  the  nave  and  watching  the 

communion     of    her    child.     Upon    the    next    day,    Holy 

/   Thursday  of  1790,  was  published  by  order  of  the  Revolu- 

/    tionary  Parliament,    that   official  paper  called  "The  Red 

Book,"  which  suddenly  heralded  to  all  the  public  all  that 

her  Court  had  been,  which  gave  body  and  form  to  all  those 


OCTOBER  319 

hitherto  vague  rumours  and  legends  of  extravagance  and  folly 
which  had  been  the  chief  weapons  of  her  enemies.  It 
was  as  though  a  malarial,  impalpable  influence  weakening 
her  had  suddenly  distilled  into  a  palpable  and  definite 
material  poison.  It  was  as  though  some  weapon  of  mist, 
which  though  formidable  was  undecided,  had  become 
suddenly  a  weapon  of  steel.  The  publication  of  that  list 
of  pensions,  of  doles,  of  bribes  effected  in  her  fortunes  a 
change  like  the  change  in  the  life  of  some  man  whose  repu- 
tation has  hitherto  suffered  from  hints  and  innuendoes,  and 
who  suddenly  finds  himself  with  the  whole  thing  published 
in  the  papers  upon  the  witness  and  record  of  a  Court  of  Law. 
Let  a  modern  reader  imagine  what  that  publication  was 
by  so  stretching  his  fancy  as  to  conceive  the  delivery  to 
general  knowledge  in  this  country  of  what  is  done  in  payment 
and  receipt  by  our  big  money-changers,  our  newspapers,  our 
politicians,  and  let  him  imagine  (by  another  stretch  of  fancy) 
a  public  opinion  in  this  country  already  alive  to  the  existence 
of  that  corruption  and  already  angry  against  it:  then  he  will 
see  what  a  date  in  the  chances  of  the  Queen's  life  was  this 
Holy  Thursday!  <^ 

Ot'lTe  business  now  before  herself  and  such  as  were  states-  V^ 
men  around  her  was  no  longer  to  make  triumphant,    but  I 
rather  to   save   the   Monarchy.  SJ 


XIII 


^** »      -*  ^  •   •   •- 

mRABAU 


FROM  APRIL  1,  1790,  TO  MS5NJOHE_iil^THE  20rn  JUNE,  1791 

THERE  existed  in  France  at  that  moment  one  force 
which,   in    alliance  with   the   Government,   could 
have    preserved    the    continuity    of     institutions, 
among  other  institutions  of  the  throne.     That  force  resided 
in  the  personality  of  Mirabeau. 

Had  he  survived  and  so  succeeded  —  for  his  failure  was 
only  possible  with  death  —  the  French  nation  might  indeed 
have  preserved  all  its  forms  and  would  then  have  lost 
its  principle  and  power.  It  might  have  been  transformed 
into  something  of  lower  vigour  than  itself,  it  might  have 
grown  to  forget  action,  and  the  nineteenth  century,  which 
was  to  see  our  civilisation  ploughed  t>y  the  armies  and  sowed 
by  the  ideas  of  Napoleon  —  so  that  it  became  a  century 
enormous  with  French  energy  and  has  left  us  to-day  under  a 
necessity  still  to  persevere  —  might  have  been  a  time  of  easy 
reaction:  a  Europe  without  Germany,  without  Italy:  a 
Europe  having  in  its  midst  the  vast  lethargic  body  of  the 
French  monarchy  and  dominated  wholly  by  the  mercantile 
activity  of  England. 

This,  I  say,  might,  or  rather  would,  have  been  the  fate 
of  the  Revolution,  and  therefore  of  the  world,  with  what 
further  consequences  we  cannot  tell,  had  Mirabeau,  once 
in  alliance  with  the  Court,  survived;  for  wherever  in  his- 
tory the  continuity  of  form  has  been  preferred,  to  a  spirit 

820 


MIRABEAU  321 

of  renascence,  such  lethargy  and  such  decline  has  succeeded. 
But  though  an  effect  of  this  kind  would  have  resulted  for 
Christendom  in  general,  for  the  Queen  and  for  her  family 
the  success  of  Mirabeau  would  have  been  salvation.  The 
air  and  the  tradition  of  the  palace  would  have  survived; 
she  would  have  grown  old  beside  her  husband  in  a  State 
lessened  but  preserving  many  of  the  externals  of  power; 
her  later  years  wise,  resigned,  and  probably  magnificent. 
As  it  was,  the  alliance  between  Mirabeau  and  the  Court 
was  made  —  but  before  the  first  year  of  its  effect  had  run, 
Mirabeau  was  dead:  he  dead,  the  slope  of  change  led 
Marie  Antoinette,  with  rapid  and  direct  insistence,  to  flight, 
to  imprisonment,  and  to  the  scaffold. 

It  is  but  very  rarely  that  so  much  can  be  laid  to  the  action 
of  one  brain  in  history.  What  were  the  characters  in  Mira-l 
beau's  position  that  made  it  true  of  him  in  this  spring  of 
1790?  They  were  these:  that  he  had  through  certain 
qualities  in  him  become  accepted  as  the  organ  of  a  jx^piilap 
movement;  that,  by  other  qualities  more  profoundly  rooted 
in  him,  he  was  determined  upon  jprdej;  and,  finally,  that 
an  early  maturity  of  judgment  —  already  hardened  before 
his  fortieth  year  —  strong  passions  often  satisfied  and  their 
resulting  fruit  of  deadness,  much  bitter  humiliation,  the 
dreadful  annealing  of  poverty  working  upon  known  and 
vast  capacity,  had  rendered  him  quite  careless  of  those 
imaginary  future  things  the  vision  of  which  alone  can  sup- 
port men  in  the  work  of  creation.  He  was  now  a  man 
walking  backwards,  observing  things  known,  judging  men, 
testing  their  actions  and  motives  as  one  would  test  natural 
and  invariable  forces,  using  the  whole  either  to  achieve 
some  end  which  had  already  been  achieved  elsewhere  — 
which  was  in  existence  somewhere  and  had  reality  —  or 


322  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

to  preserve  things  still  standing  around  him,  things  whose 
nature  he  knew.  He  would  have  preserved  all,  and  he 
would  have  degraded  his  land.  This  most  national  of 
Frenchmen  would  have  closed  to  France  her  avenue  of 
growth.  He  was  "practical":  and  the  chief  quality  of  his 
people,  which  is  the  power  most  suddenly  to  evoke  a  cor- 
porate will,  he  did  not  comprehend.  It  was  a  mystery, 
and  therefore  he  ignored  it.  Of  things  hidden  he  could 
divine  nothing  at  all.  The  Faith,  for  example,  being  then 
driven  underground,  he  utterly  despised. 

His  command  of  spoken  speech,  sonorous,  incisive, 
revealing,  dominating  by  turns;  his  rapid  concentration 
of  phrase,  his  arrangement  and  possession  (through  others) 
of  innumerable  details,  were  points  that  made  him  the 
chief  of  a  Parliament:  his  courage  and  advancing  presence 
-  for  he  was  a  sort  of  lion  —  peculiarly  suited  him  to  the 
Gauls,  and  his  love  of  men,  which  was  enormous,  for- 
bade the  growth  of  those  feminine  enmities  which  are  the 
only  perils  of  our  vulgar  politicians  to-day,  and  which 
sprouted  from  debate  even  in  the  high  temper  of  the  Revo- 
lution, as  they  must  sprout  wherever  talking  and  not 
fighting  is  the  game. 

His  travel,  his  wide  reading,  his  communication  through- 
out Europe  and  in  the  greatest  houses  with  numerous  close, 
varied  and  admiring  friends,  gave  him  that  poise  and 
that  contempt  for  vision  which  made  his  leadership,  when 
once  he  led,  secure. 

With  all  this  went  the  passion  to  administrate,  to  do, 
which  months  of  speeches  and  of  opposition  to  the  executive 
had  but  swollen.  In  April  his  opportunity  came. 

It  was  the  Queen  who  made  this  capital  move. 

For  many  months,  indeed,  he  would  have  come  in  secret 


MIRABEAU  323 


to  the  aid  of  the  Court.  From  the  very  meeting  of  the 
States-General  the  year  before,  Mirabeau  had  known  that 
his  place  was  with  Government  rather  than  in  the  tribune. 
His  past  of  passion  forbade  him  executive  power.  Necker, 
with  quite  another  past  —  a  nasty  financial  past  —  had 
dared  to  insult  him  in  the  early  days  of  the  Parliament.  All 
the  summer  he  had  begged  La  Marck,  his  friend,  to  speak 
for  him  to  the  Queen,  to  the  Throne.  La  Marck,  who  was 
very  close  to  the  Queen  and  was  a  companion  since  Trianon, 
had  spoken,  but  Mirabeau  was  still  a  voice  only,  and,  to 
women,  an  unpleasant  one.  In  October  he  had  directly 
attacked  the  Queen  —  she  held  him  responsible  for  the  two 
dreadful  days  and  the  insults  of  the  drag  back  to  Paris. 
The  decrees  in  November  which  preserved  the  Assembly 
from  decay,  by  forbidding  its  members  to  accept  office,  had 
closed  the  Ministry  to  him:  in  December  he  had  tried  to 
work  a  secret  executive  power  through  Monsieur  and 
Marie  Antoinette's  distrust  of  Monsieur  had  again  foiled 
him.  La  Marck  had  given  up  hope  of  helping  his  friend, 
the  decrees  and  the  debates  of  the  Assembly  shook  the 
Throne  with  increasing  violence,  the  King  was  counselless, 
when,  after  some  long  debate  within  herself,  of  which,  in 
the  nature  of  the  thing,  we  can  have  no  hint  or  record,  the 
Queen,  in  the  days  when  the  preparation  for  her  child's 
sacrament  was  her  chief  affair,  and  a  fortnight  or  so  before 
that  communion,  determined  to  unite  the  brain  of  Mira- 
beau to  the  Crown. 

^She^easily^  persuader)  Louis.  Before  or  after  that  per- 
suasion she  spoke  to  Mercy,  and  Mercy  wrote  to  that  ances- 
tral Balzic  land  whither  La  Marck,  certain  that  nothing 
could  be  done  in  Paris,  and  desiring  to  check  the  effects  of 
the  revolt  in  the  Austrian  Netherlands  upon  his  estates, 


324  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

had  betaken  him  three  months  before.  La  Marck  at  once 
returned;  he  crossed  the  frontier,  and  in  his  private  house 
up  along  the  Faubourg  St.  Honore,  Mirabeau  and  Mercy 
met  upon  an  April  evening.  All  was  most  secretly  done, 
so  that  none,  not  the  populace,  nor  the  Parliament,  nor  the 
courtiers  —  nor  even  Necker  —  should  know.  These  two 
very  separate  abilities,  Mercy  and  Mirabeau,  recognised 
each  other:  for  some  days  yet,  the  latter  and  the  greater,  the 
storm-tossed  one,  doubted;  he  still  spoke  of  "an  embassy" 
for  his  reward  —  he  stooped  to  beg  favour  again  of  La 
Fayette.  At  last  he  was  convinced  of  the  Court's  sincerity, 
and  on  the  tenth  of  May  he  wrote  for  the  King  —  that  is, 
for  the  Government  (there  was  no  other)  —  that  first 
admirable  Letter  of  Advice  which  remains  the  chief  monu- 
ment of  his  genius.  In  one  year  he  had  proceeded  from 
being  an  Evil  Reputation  to  be  a  Speechifier,  from  a  Speechi- 
fier  to  a  something  inspiring  dread:  now  he  was  secretly 
in  power;  in  half -power;  his  was  one  of  the  hands  on  the 
tiller.  To  himself  that  year  had  been  but  a  year  of  debt 
and  makeshift;  his  principal  relief  at  this  vast  change  was  a 
relief  of  the  purse. 

Mirabeau  wante^Lnioney.  He  was  a  gentleman,  and  his 
honour  wanted  it.  In  his  appetite  for  it  he  did  all  a  gentle- 
man would  do,  sacrificing  that  which  men  not  gentlemen 
would  not  part  with  to  save  their  lives.  He  approached 
enemies  and  friends  indifferently.  La  Fayette,  whose 
militia  power  offended  him  and  whose  nullity  drove  him 
wild,  La  Fayette  whom  he  had  attacked  and  publicly  jeered 
at,  he  quietly  tapped  for  ,£2,000  and  railed  when  that  cau- 
tious Saviour  of  Two  Worlds  sent  less  than  half  the  sum. 
He  had  the  gentleman's  morbid  shame  of  old  debts  and  the 
gentleman's  carelessness  in  contracting  new.  He  was  of  the 


MIRABEAU  325 

sort  that  kill  themselves  rather  than  finally  default,  and 
yet  who  take  the  road  that  makes  defaulting  sure.  To  such 
a  man,  now  rising  on  the  Revolutionary  wave,  entertain- 
ing, ordering  secretarial  work  on  every  side,  playing  the 
part  of  a  public  god,  the  offer  of  the  Court  was  new  life. 
Yet  here  again  some  apology  must  be  offered  to  the  modern 
reader  for  the  pettiness  of  the  sum  which  sufficed  in  those 
days  to  purchase  so  much  power  upon  such  an  occasion. 
For  the  salvation  of  the  Monarchy  Mirabeau  was  to  receive, 
upon  the  payment  of  his  debts,  not  half  the  income  we  give 
to  a  politician  who  has  climbed  on  to  the  Front  Bench: 
when  he  had  accomplished  his  task  he  was  to  receive, 
upon  retirement,  a  sum  that  would  just  purchase  such  a 
pension  as  we  accord  for  life  to  a  nephew  or  a  son-in-law 
fatigued  by  two  years  of  the  Board  of  Trade.  He  accepted 
the  terms:  but  for  him,  and  for  those  like  him,  a  wage, 
however  shameful  or  secret,  is  but  an  opportunity  for  intense 
and  individual  action.  He  was  the  more  himself  and  the 
less  a  servant  when  he  had  wages  to  spend..  He  designed 
his  campaign  at  once:  to  see  the  Queen  upon  whose  energy 
alone  he  relied  and  in  whom  —  though  he  had  never  kissed  her 
hand  or  spoken  to  her  face  to  face  —  he  divined  a  corre- 
sponding courage;  and  next,  through  her,  while  maintain- 
ing his  demagogic  power,  to  crush  the  growth  of  anarchy 
by  the  welding  of  an  army;  and  at  last  $0  restore  the  Mon- 
a  civil  war.  For  order  was,  he  imagined,  the  cnief 


affair,  and  anarchy  was  all  that  great  brain  could  discover 
in  the  early  ferment  of  the  time. 

He  was  a  man  very  capable  of  being  a  lover:  he  was  an 
artist  who  ardently  desired  an  instrument:  he  trusted  his 
capacity  with  women,  and  he  far  over-priced  the  powerJa- 
'qction,  though,  not  the  vigour,  of  the  Queen.  She  upon  her 


326  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

side  dreaded  the  meeting  and  delayed  it,  though  Mercy 
himself  and  the  new  Archbishop  of  Toulouse,  now  her 
confessor,  urged  it. 

Upon  the  4th  of  June  the  Court   had  left  Paris  for  St. 
Cloud  to  spend,  within  an  hour  of  the  capital  and  with- 
in sight  of  it,  the  months  of  summer.     That  memorable 
anniversary  of  her  son's  death  isolated  and  saddened  the 
woman  upon  whom  was  thus  thrown  a  responsibility  too 
great   for   her   judgment.     All   the   month   she   hesitated, 
while  the  notes  from   Mirabeau  in  his  new  capacity  as 
Counsellor  of  the  Court,  coming  in  continually  more  insistent, 
more  authoritative,  and  more  wide,  made  the  meeting  a 
necessity.     At    last,    upon     the     29th,    she     decided.    A 
room  was  chosen,  "such  that  none  could  know" ;  he  was 
to  come  upon  Friday,    July    3,    to    the    little  back  door 
of  the  garden  toward  the  park;  there  was  a  further  delay  - 
he  was  put  off  to  the  morrow.  He  slept  at  his  sister's  house 
at  Auteuil,  and  early  on  the  Saturday  morning,  taking  his 
sister's   son  with  him  for  sole   companion,   disguised,   he 
drove   to   the   little   garden   door.     Everything   was   silent 
about  him  in  the  summer  morning  as  he  drove  from  Auteuil 
to  St.  Cloud,  that  nephew  of  his  riding  as  his  postilion, 
and  no  one  by.     A  certain  suspicion  weighed  upon  him. 
He  remembered  the  delays,  the  secrecy;  he  remembered  that 
no  friend  loved  him  as  much  as  each  loved  or  hated  the 
Crown.     Before  he  put  his  hand  to  the  latch  he  gave  the 
boy  a  note  and  said:  "If  I  am  not  returned  within  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour,  give  this  to  the  Captain  of  the  Militia," 
and,  having  said  this,  he  went  alone  into  the  garden. 

In  France  and  throughout  his  world  the  event  of  those 
days  was  the  JFederaiion.  In  ten  days  all  the  delegates 
would  meet  upon  the  Champ^  deJVta  rs  for  the  anniversary 


MIRABEAU  327 

of  the  Bastille:  the  change  in  men  was  to  be  confirmed  in  a 
vast  meeting  of  friendship:  the  King  was  to  swear  and  a 
world  quite  renewed  was  to  arise.  Even  in  London  the 
blaze  of  the  triumph  had  struck  the  street,  and  the  com- 
mon shows  were  preparing  pictures  and  models  of  the  feast. 
Upon  this  all  Europe  was  turned  as  the  delegates  came 
swarming  daily  into  the  simmering  July  of  Paris  and  as  the 
altar  rose  upon  the  great  open  field  by  the  river.  For 
him,  and  now  for  history  also,  a  greater,  what  might,  had 
Mirabeau  lived,  have  been  a  more  enduring  scene,  was  the 
secret  morning  meeting  so  prepared. 

The  Queen  awaited  him  in  a  room  apart,  the  King  at 
her  side.  She  awaited  with  some  hesitation  the  fierce  step 
and  the  bold  eye,  the  strong,  pitted  face  of  "the  Monster." 
but  her  rank  and  a  long  apprenticeship  to  reception  had 
taught  her  to  receive.  He  came  in  and  saw  this  woman 
whom  he  had  so  much  desired  to  see;  he  spoke  with  her 
for  half  an  hour,  and  as  he  left  her  he  kissed  her  hand. 
Two  things  remained  with  him :  the  moderation,  the  over- 
moderation  of  the  King,  but  in  her  a  sort  of  regal  deter- 
jninatioa  which  was  half  an  illusion  of  his  own,  but  which 
most  powerfully  filled  his  spirit  and  which  left  him  enfeoffed 
to  the  cause  he  had  so  long  chosen  to  serve.  He  came  out 
to  his  nephew,  where  the  carriage  waited,  radiant,  all  his 
energy  renewed.  He  had  perhaps  a  clear  conception  of 
the  Queen  in  action  supporting  him,  determining  the  King, 
eagerly  accepting  his  wisdom  and  his  plans.  In  that  he 
gave  her  far  too  great  a  place;  but  great  men  impute  great- 
ness, and  l^Tirabeau  was  too  great  for  wpmpjp. 

The  show  of  the  Federation  passed,  gloriously;  the  life 
of  the  nation  rose  to  passion  and  broke  bounds.  In  the 
matter  of  the  .army,  by  which  alone  Authority  could  live, 


328  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Mirabeau  saw  its  strengthdissolved.  The  melting  of  society 
had  destroyed  that  discipline,  the  hardest,  the  most  neces- 
sary and  the  least  explicable  bond  among  men:  the  frontier 
mutinied  for  arrears  of  pay,  and  with  the  first  days  of 
August  it  was  evident  that  neither  for  defence  nor  for  the 
re-establishment  of  law  could  the  army  be  available.  The 
army,  that  one  solid  weapon  of  the  Monarchy,  was  now 
cracked  all  down  the  blade.  The  Army  of  the  East, 
long,  as  I  have  said,  the  chief  resource  of  the  executive, 
was  affected  like  the  rest  of  .the  service.  There  Bouille, 
a  trained  and  careful  man,  wealthy,  noble  of  course, 
whiggish  in  politics,  and  of  middle  age,  held  the  command  and 
saw  from  one  day  to  another  in  all  the  garrisons  of  his  com- 
mand the  method  of  soldiers  failing.  One  .mutiny  followed 
another;  regimental  chests  were  seized  for  arrears  of  pay; 
the  non-commissioned  officers  were  no  longer  with  the 
cadre  in  spirit;  officers  of  the  lower  grades  had  been  insulted, 
of  the  higher  reluctantly  and  more  reluctantly  obeyed. 

It  was  at  this  moment  that  Mirabeau  saw  fit  to  give  that 
grave  advice  for  which  posterity  has  judged  him  so  hardly, 
and  which  yet  betrays  the  decision  of  his  soul.  He  deter- 
mined upon  £Jyil  war. 

Many  things  might  have  saved  him  and  the  nation  from 
such  a  policy:  notably  La  Fayette,  a  plaster  head  of  the 
Militia  might  have  been  made  a  reserve  force  behind  the 
failing  regulars,  and  it  has  been  pretended  that  La  Fayette 
and  Mirabeau  were  now  quite  separate,  and  the  wealthy 
young  fellow  useless  to  his  elder  the  Statesman,  because 
La  Fayette,  in  opposing  Mirabeau's  presidency  of  the 
Assembly  for  the  Federation,  had  offended  the  vanity  from 
which  great  orators  suffer.  The  cause  is  insufficient. 
Mirabeau  had  lost  all  hope  that  La  Fayette  could  act.  He 


MIRABEAU  329 

passed  him  by.  What  as  a  fact  did  prevent  the  immediate 
prosecution  of  Mirabeau's  policy  was  the  insufficiency  of 
the  Queen,  and  this  it  was  that  saved  the  country  and  the 
memory  of  her  adviser  from  a  course  that  would  certainly 
have  preserved  the  Throne.* 

Contrasted  against  the  surroundings  of  her  family  and 
her  Court,  even  of  her  immediate  enemies,  her  decision  had 
shone;  contrasted  against  Mirabeau's  will  it  was  pale. 
she  even  attempted  to  foist  upon  him,  that 


project  of  .foreign  intervention  which,  three  years  later, 
killed  her;  and  his  famous  words  in  his  Advice  of  August 
13,  seemed  to  her  rhetoric  or  worse.  Its  style  was  "extra- 
ordinary": he  was  "mad."  "Four  enemies  are  at  the 
charge,"  he  had  written,  "the  taxes,  repudiation,  the  army, 
and  winter"  —  she  could  not  bear  the  style  :  but  he  was  right. 
The  harvest  was  in  —  it  was  not  sufficient;  a  new  and  vast 
increase  of  assignats  was  voted  —  Mirabeau  himself  most 
urgently  advising  it  —  and  on  all  this,  at  the  end  of  August, 
came  Nancy. 

The  chief  and  the  last  foundation  of  force  for  the  King 
were  the  Swiss  regiments.  Those  of  the  Guard  in  the 
last  supreme  moment  of  the  Monarchy  all  but  saved  it.  At 
Nancy  in  that  August  of  1790  three  regiments  were  quar- 
tered, two  French,  one  Swiss,  that  called  "Chateau  Vieux." 
They  mutinied,  mainly  for  pay;  after  scenes  which  do  not 
concern  this  book,  they  were  broken  —  upon  the  last  day 
of  the  month,  with  a  loss  to  the  still  disciplined  troops 
opposing  them  of  forty  officers  and  ten  times  that  num- 
ber of  men.  The  gravity  of  that  day  was  of  a  kind  we  also 
know,  when,  in  some  crisis  (with  us  such  crisis  has  been  for 
generations  foreign,  not  domestic),  a  much  graver  thing, 
a  much  louder  noise,  brings  to  a  pitch  emotion  ready  for 


330  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

violence  and  suddenly  presents  as  a  reality  what  all  had 
desired  or  feared.  Of  such  are  the  first  shots  of  a  war, 
the  first  news  of  a  fatal  illness.  The  French  mutineers 
were  disbanded.  The  opinion  of  the  moment  would  have 
tolerated  no  course  more  severe :  but  —  and  this  was  the 
wedge  that  stuck  into  the  heart  of  the  time  and  clove  men 
asunder  —  the  Swiss  were  made  such  an  example  of  old 
things  as  the  whole  Revolution  had  come  to  sweep  away. 
True,  their  own  rich  officers  were  the  judges  of  the  Swiss; 
what  was  done  did  not  then  lie  and  does  not  lie  -to-day  on 
the  conscience  of  the  French  people;  but  when  of  these 
foreign  peasants,  driven  by  poverty  to  a  foreign  service  and 
maddened  to  mutiny  by  the  fraudulent  retaining  of  their 
pay,  one-half  were  made  the  subjects  of  a  public  horror,  the 
country  gasped.  The  town  of  Nancy,  a  town  of  great 
beauty,  the  flower  of  Lorraine,  had  fought  with  and  had 
supported  the  mutineers.  It  suffered  the  sight  of  half 
of  the  whole  Swiss  regiment  marched  out  for  punishment, 
half  sent  to  barracks  and  then  reserved  for  some  obscurer 
fate.  Of  those  so  publicly  destroyed,  two-thirds  were  for 
the  galleys,  near  a  third  were  hanged  on  high  gallows  before 
all,  to  turn  the  stomachs  of  the  new  Citizens  of  a  free  state; 
one  was  broken  on  the  wheel  with  clubs,  his  bones  crushed  to 
satisfy  the  privileged  in  a  social  order  already  infamous, 
his  blood  spattered  on  the  pavement  of  a  town  which  had 
befriended  him.  It  was  an  anomaly  of  hell  fallen  in  the 
midst  of  the  new  hopes  and  within  six  weeks  of  that  clamour 
of  good-will  upon  the  Champ  de  Mars  when  all  such  night- 
mares were  to  have  been  buried  for  ever. 

The  Assembly  voted  its  thanks  for  the  restoration  of 
order:  the  vote  was  moved  by  Mirabeau.  Bouille  com- 
manded an  army  now  silent,  and  the  thing  was  done. 


MIRABEAU  331 

But  the  minority  of  wealthy  men  that  had  thus  dared 
applaud  the  executions  at  Nancy  was  now  cut  off  from 
fellowship  with  the  nation,  and  the  civil  war  which  Mira- 
beau  desired  was  come  in  spirit  —  for  the  Government, 
the  only  possible  executive,  the  Crown,  was  with  that 
minority. 

Necker,  lost  in  public  opinion,  defeated  in  finance, 
thoroughly  terrified  at  the  sound  of  arms,  was  off  across 
the  frontier  for  ever  to  Geneva,  his  Bible  and  his  money- 
bags. For  a  few  months  Mirabeau's  strength  was  to  remain 
increasing,  the  one  central  thing  —  but  secretly  his  power 
of  action  was  marred,  for,  while  the  Court  listened  and 
heard  him,  it  did  not  move.  He  would  have  seen  the  Queen 

—  she  would  not  see  him.     Already  his  complicity  was 
guessed  by  a  few  —  it  had  been  denounced  frenziedly  and 
amid  Parliamentary  jeers  and  laughter  by  one  young  man, 
since  dead:  but  the  rumour  had  terrified  the  palace.    Mira- 
beau,  still  taking  the  palace's  pay,  still  pouring  in  upon  it 
Advices  which  he  desired  to  be  commands  —  (and  yet  still 
refused  so  much  as  a  Royal  audience) — grew  continually 
upon  the  Parliament. 

As  his  power  over  the  Assembly  increased,  his^rel^against 
the  hesit.fliTmT__nf  the  Court.  iTifTfapM  w^  it;  it  increased 
X)  desperation,  and  that  desperation  was  the  more  exasper- 
ated because  a  man  of  his  temper  could  not  grasp  —  in 
the  absence  of  personal  interviews  —  what  it  was  that 
held  back  the  Crown.  Yet  to  a  man  of  another  temper 
the  explanation  would  have  been  easy.  There  was  a  con- 
flict, not  only  of  mediocrity  with  genius,  not  only  of  two  wills 

—  the  one  accustomed  to  an  inert  command,  the  other  avid 
to  exercise  a  vigorous  one,  but  a  conflict   also  of  ends  to 
be    attained;    for    that    which    Mirabeau    desired  —  and 


332  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

which  he  thought  the  King  and  Queen  to  desire  —  was  a 
national  thing,  whereas  what  the  King  and  Queen  now 
desired  was  a  personal  thing.  He  all  the  while  was  con- 
sidering the  Monarchy,  an  institution  necessary  to  his 
country :  they  thought  more  and  more  daily  of  their  individ- 
ual selves:  their  habits,  their  wounded  right,  their  chil- 
dren —  their  religion. 

In  nothing  did  the  friction  of  that  new  machine,  the 
alliance  between  Miral^an  anjJthg-T'^i^  show  more  than 
in  this  mfliter  of  religion.  To  Mirabeau,  as  to  every  vigor- 
ous spirit  of  that  generation,  the  Faith  was  inconceivable. 
How  far,  by  an  effort  of  fancy,  he  could  picture  minds  that 
held  it  one  cannot  tell,  but  one  may  be  certain  that  he 
could  not  but  associate  such  minds.,  with  ineptitude.  Now 
the  business  of  1790,  unknown  to  the  men  who  most  mixed 
in  that  business,  was  Religion.  France  had  of  herself 
transformed  herself  in  eighteen  months.  The  Roman 
conceptions  had  returned,  the  municipalities  governed, 
the  whole  people  were  moving  in  a  stream  together,  equal- 
ity had  re-arisen  to  the  surface  of  things;  war,  if  war  came, 
would  be  a  national  thing — the  life  in  each  had  deter- 
mined to  be  based  upon  a  general  will.  At  this  over- 
whelming change  the  Parliament  had  assisted;  it  was 
their  function  to  express  its  main  features  in  new  laws, 
and,  as  to  details,  to  thresh  them  out  in  debate  and  make 
them  fit  the  new  scheme:  among  these  details  was  the 
definition  of  the  Clergy's  status.  The  Catholic  Church 
was  present  —  for  the  peasants,  at  least  —  and  it  must 
there  still  be  recognised,  its  powers  must  be  defined,  the 
terms  of  its  recognition  must  be  formulated.  These  cul- 
tivated men  of  the  Parliament  —  and  I  include  the  bishops 
—  had  no  conception  of  Resurrection.  The  Church  was 


MIRABEAU  333 

an  old  thing,  passive,  woven  into  the  lower  stuff  of  the 
State;  it  would  not  again  be  what  a  dim  tradition  affirmed 
it  once  to  have  been.  Let  it  die  down  quietly  in  its  villages 
and  go.  As  for  the  Institution  of  it,  the  higher-salaried 
places  —  its  use  in  Government  —  why,  that  was  to  be 
Gallican. 

Just  before  the  Federation  in  July,  the  CIVIL  CON- 
STITUTION OF  THE  CLERGY  had  passed  the 
House.  Just  before  Nancy  the  King  had  assented,  and 
it  was  law. 

To  the  men  who  spoke  and  legislated,  it  was  a  just  and 
straightforward  law;  to  us  who  know  a  future  they  could  not 
know,  it  was  a  monstrous  absurdity.  Priests  and  bishops 
"elected"  —  not  by  an  enthusiasm  or  by  clamour  or  by  a 
populace  ardent,  but  by  paper  votes  —  as  we  elect  our 
dunderheads  to  Westminster!  Unity,  the  prime  test  of  life, 
secured  by  no  more  than  a  letter  to  Rome  announcing  elec- 
tion and  courteously  admitting  communion.  Every  diocese 
and  parish  a  new  creation,  created  without  any  consultation 
of  Peter  and  his  authority !  Yet  such  was  the  sleep  of  the 
Faith  a  century  ago  that  this  incredible  instrument  provoked 
discussion  only;  and  such  protests  as  came  were  not  pro- 
tests of  laughter  or  even  of  anger,  but  protests  of  argu- 
ment —  with  after-thoughts  of  money.  But  the  King  and 
the  Queen  believed. 

Had  she  not  suffered,  this  void  of  the  century  in  matters 
of  the  soul  might  have  left  Marie  Antoinette  indifferent. 
She  had  been  indifferent  to  that  prig  brother  of  hers 
when  he  played  the  philosopher  at  Vienna  and  the  fool  in 
the  Netherlands.  The  populace,  who  guard  the  seeds  of 
religion,  were  unknown  to  her  as  to  the  King  and  to 
the  Parliament.  But  she  had  so  suffered  that  she  had 


\ 


334  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

concentrated  upon  the  Creed :  her  husband  had  always  held 
it  simply --he  was  a  simple  man.  Now,  when  he  signed 
the  Civil  Constitution  and  she  knew  of  that  act,  it  was 
proof  that  they  had  done  with  the  national  ferment,  that  their 
concern  was  to  get  away  to  return  and  to  reconquer;  that 
henceforward  no  public  act  of  theirs,  no  acceptation  of  any 
Reform,  had  in  it  or  was  meant  to  have  the  least  validity 
in  conscience.  She  especially  was  quite  cut  off  henceforward 
from  the  crown  she  had  worn  —  it  was  no  longer  a  symbol 
of  her  state  for  her;  and  if  she  had  continued  to  wear  it, 
as  Mirabeau  desired,  after  a  reconquest  achieved  through 
civil  war,  she  would  have  worn  it  contentedly  over  defeated 
subjects  rather  than  over  a  nation. 

All  this  Mirabeau  saw  as  little  as  he  saw  the  passion 
of  the  village  priests,  the  anger  of  the  women  in  the  country- 
sides. The  resistance  (which  immediately  began)  he 
thought  purely  political.  Priests  that  would  not  take  the 
oath  were  Partisans  of  the  old  tyranny  and  breakdown; 
the  Pope,  who  was  preparing  his  definite  refusal,  was  a 
subtle  Italian  whom  he,  Mirabeau,  must  meet  by  a  Gallic 
brutality.  To  the  King  Mirabeau  secretly  represented  the 
Civil  Constitution  and  the  gathering  revolt  against  it  as  an 
excellent  lever  for  recruiting  the  provinces  and  raising  that 
civil  war  of  the  Government  against  anarchy  which  was  his 
whole  policy;  but  to  the  Assembly  (and  here  it  was  most 
of  himself  that  appeared)  he  spoke  against  the  Church's 
refusal  to  accept  with  a  violence  that  astounded,  and  at 
times  provoked  to  rebuke,  his  most  extreme  admirers. 
All  his  spirit  during  that  autumn  and  early  winter  of  1790- 
91  is  one  of  diatribe  and  fury  against  the  intangible  foe  he 
himself  had  raised. 

On  the  26th  of  November  he  forced  the  Assembly  to  vote 


MIRABEAU  335 

the  prosecution  of  priests  who  refused  the  oath;  on  the  4th 
of  January  he  accused  the  hierarchy  of  their  old  game  — 
"too  well  known  in  our  history"  -of  playing  for  an  "ultra- 
montane" authority;  ten  days  later,  on  the  14th,  he 
broke  all  bounds:  swore  that  the  priests  cared  little  if 
religion  died  (and  much  he  cared  for  it!)  so  that  their 
power  was  saved.  The  priests  present  left  the  hall.  He  con- 
tinued with  greater  violence,  and  all  the  Assembly  protested. 
On  the  proposition  of  Camus  (himself  next  door  to  a 
Huguenot)  it  was  moved  and  carried  that  Mirabeau  be  no 
longer  heard.  When,  a  bare  week  after  all  this,  a  Letter 
of  Advice  reached  the  King  from  Mirabeau  headed,  "On 
the  Way  to  make  use  of  the  Civil  Constitution,"  how  should 
the  King  not  be  bewildered  ? 

The  King  read  it;  he  found  a  stupefying  series  of  coun- 
sels. How  could  so  simple  a  man  as  he  understand  the  con- 
tradiction between  Mirabeau's  public  speeches  and  secret 
executive  advice?  "No  time"  (he  read  in  Mirabeau's 
private  communication  to  the  Crown),  "no  time  could  be 
more  favourable  for  uniting  all  the  malcontents,  the  most 
dangerous  ones,  and  raising  his  royal  popularity  to  the 
detriment  of  the  Assembly";  he  was  to  provoke  resistance 
secretly,  to  refuse  executive  aid :  to  throw  the  odium  of  the 
Civil  J^ktastifctttieii  und  of  llie~p£Je§ts^  resistance  to  it  on  the. 
Assembly.  What  could  a  man  of  Louis'  kind  make  of  all 
this  ?  Had  Marie  Antoinette  been  a  she-Mirabeau,  as 
Mirabeau  half  believed  her  to  be,  she  might  have  followed 
the  plan.  Contrariwise,  she  was  a  Christian  mother,  much 
too  untaught  and  too  devout  by  now  to  use  religion  for 
political  intrigue.  To  emphasise  their  bewilderment,  this 
Husband  and  Wife  find  that  their  late  Confessor  —  whom 
they  had  indignantly  rejected  for  his  schism  —  had  taken 


336  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  oath  at  the  pressing  of  Mirabeau  himself.  ...  It 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  Mirabeau's  advice  in  every- 
thing hung  fire. 

There  were  other  glaring  contrasts  between  his  public 
and  his  private  view:  there  was  Mirabeau's  high  playing  of 
the  demagogue  role.  He  must  roar  with  the  Jacobins:  that 
organisation,  the  "radical  thousand"  of  Paris,  and  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  societies  at  its  back  throughout  France, 
already  directed  the  storm  from  the  October  of  '90.  He 
mixed  with  it,  flattered  it,  became  its  powerful  spokesman 
in  the  Assembly,  was  its  President  by  the  end  of  November; 
and  while  he  so  marked  and  emphasised  with  his  voice  and 
will  almost  every  one  of  the  succeeding  steps  that  led 
towards  a  pure  democracy,  he  marvelled  that  the  Court 
would  not  accept  his  secret  counsel  and  believe  his  support 
of  the  Crown  to  be  his  true  motive  of  action  all  the  while. 
It  was  indeed  his  main  motive;  but  men  of  his  stature  also 
require  applause,  and  the  double  part  he  filled  was  acted 
too  brilliantly  upon  its  public  side  for  his  private  states- 
manship —  to  which  all  his  intellect  and  much  of  his  heart 
was  really  devoted  —  to  obtain  full  weight  at  the  palace. 
He  was  permanently  rgj&teusted,  and  he  met  that  mistrust 
by  chance  phrases  of  contempt  or  insult  which  he  may  or 
may  not  have  intended  to  be  repeated  to  the  woman  and 
the  office  which  he  desired  both  to  guide  and  to  save. 

In  one  thing,  however,  his  influence  still  weighed:  in  that 
one  thing  it  would  have  sufficed,  had  he  lived,  to  save  the 
Queen.  I  mean  in  the  plan,  still  debated  and  still  post- 
poned, for  the  abandonment  of  Paris  by  the  Crown. 

I  have  said  that  the  main  understanding  between  the 
Queen  and  Mirabeau  lay  in  thisTthat  for  hrm_g,  jpati'orml 
for  her  a  domestic  end  was  now  in  view.  For  months  he 


MIRABEAU  337 

had  urged  a  public  withdrawal  from  the  capital,  a  public 
appeal  to  the  armed  forces,  a  withdrawal  to  some  near  and 
loyal  town,  a  town  with  a  palace  and  tradesmen  dependent 
on  it  —  to  Compiegne,  for  instance,  a  long  day's  ride1  away; 
thereafter  an  appeal  to  the  provinces  and,  if  the  extremists 
and  Paris  would  fight,  then  a  civil  war  and  a  reconquest 
of  power.  He  had  talked  of  the  Queen  on  horseback 
with  her  son;  he  resurrected  Maria  Theresa  and  imagined 
bold  things.  The  Queen  desired  for  her  husband,  herself,  and 
her  children  merely  safety:  but  she  would  not  leave  the  King. 

Once  that  summer  the  Queen  and  her  children  had  driven 
out  from  St.  Cloud  towards  the  western  woods  that  over- 
hang the  Seine;  the  King  and  his  gentlemen  had  ridden 
westward  also  in  the  wooded  plain  below.  Many  in  either 
retinue  had  thought  the  moment  come,  but  each  party 
returned  at  evening. 

Returned  to  Paris  in  the  autumn,  the  rising  flood  of  pub- 
ilic  feeling  made  a  public  appeal  and  a  public  withdrawal 
more  difficult  with  every  succeeding  month,  and  month 
after  month  it  was  postponed. 

The  foreigner,  of  whom  the  French  had  hardly  thought 
•  during  the  first  months  of  their  enthusiasm,  now  re-arose 
i before  them;  many  were  already  anxious  for  the  frontier, 
i  and  already  the  irritant  of  German  menace,  which  was  to 
i  lead  at  last  from  Valmy  to  Wattignies  and  from  Wattignies 
Jto  Jena,  had  begun  to  chafe  the  military  appetites  of  Paris. 
Were  war  to  break  out  with  the  spring  of  the  next  year  — 
may,  were  it  only  in  the  air  — the  escape  of  the  King  from 
!  Paris  would  be  more  difficult  than  ever. 

It  was  at  the  close  of  October,2  before  the  Court  had  left 

1  To  be  accurate,  a  little  less  than  fifty  miles. 

-  2  Oct.  aoth,  not  the  aard,  a  date  accepted  since  the  publication  of  Bouill^'s  Memoirs  in  1833,  but  corrected 
by  collation  with  the  original  two  years  ago.  • 


338  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

St.  Cloud  for  Paris,  that  the  plan  for  leaving  Paris  first  took 
definite  shape  and  that  Louis  sent  Parniers  with  a  message 
to  Bouille  at  Metz. 

Mirabeau  had  pointed  to  Bouille  as  the  only  general 
to  defend  that  march.  Not  because  Bouille  was  on  the 
frontier,  but  because  Bouille  had  got  his  army  in  hand 
again,  was  very  capable,  did  not  intrigue.  But  Bouille, 
in  Mirabeau's  design,  was  to  come  westward  and  to  receive 
the  King  at  Compiegne.  The  General  himself  accepted 
such  a  plan  and  urged  it.  The  King  still  preferred  a  flight 
to  the  very  frontier,  Besan£on  for  choice,  and  it  is  impos- 
sible —  when  his  reluctance  to  leave  at  all  is  considered, 
his  whole  character,  his  wife's  counsel,  and  her  previous 
attitude  in  the  letters  and  appeals  of  that  summer  —  to 
doubt  that  the  Queen  had  moulded  that  decision.  It 
was  not  a  firm  choice.  Bouille's  son,  coming  at  Christmas 
to  Paris  to  sound  people  and  things,  found  La  Fayette 
of  very  dubious  loyalty,  and  he  doubted  the  aid  of  the 
Militia.  He  saw  Fersen  (the  young  fellow  took  for  granted 
that  Fersen  was  the  Queen's  lover) ;  he  saw  him  in  Fersen's 
own  house  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Honore.  They  discussed 
the  rottenness  of  the  army,  the  unlikeliness  of  immediate 
foreign  aid.  It  was  decided  to  postpone  the  thing  for 
three  months. 

And  meanwhile  the  Queen  heard  debated  before  her  the 
alternatives  of  a  flight  to  the  frontier  and  of  a  domestic 
rising  nearer  Paris  in  defence  of  the  Crown.  She  was  by 
all  her  bent  —  and  was  increasingly  to  be  —  in  favour  of 
foreign^  support;  but  Mirabeau's  counsel  was  something 
to  her.  At  the  end  of  February  it  prevailed,  and  La  Marck 
came  to  Bouille  at  Metz  with  the  news  that  Mirabeau's 
plan  should  be  considered.  Bouille  agreed.  There  was 


MIRABEAU  339 

to  be  no  suggestion  of  flight :  the  Court's  choice  of  the  frontier 
was  to  be  abandoned.  Compiegne  should  be  the  goal  of  a 
short  and  determined  march.  The  soldier  rejoiced,  as  did 
Mirabeau ,  that  a  final  decision  had  been  made,  that  no  near 
presence  of  foreign  aid  was  expected,  and  that  the  idea  of  a 
flight  to  the  frontier  was  given  up.  March,  perhaps  the 
close  of  it,  was  to  see  the  thing  done,  and  so  with  the  spring 
was  to  be  issued  the  challenge  to  civil  war:  then  and  then 
only,  if  necessary,  might  follow  a  retirement  upon  a  fortress. 
The  thing  was  dangerous  and  more  dangerous.  Mes- 
dames,  the  King's  aunts,  had  left  their  country  house  at 
great  pains  for  Italy :  the  populace  had  all  but  detained  them. 
La  Fayette,  a  month  later,  had  disarmed  certain  gentlemen 
of  the  palace  and  had  insisted  that  his  Militia  alone  mount 
guard.  It  was  certain,  as  March  crept  on,  that  the  decision 
must  soon  be  taken,  and  that  the  double  power  of  Mirabeau 
over  Coiirt  anH  Parliament, could  alone  force  the  exit  from 
'aris  to  a  well-chosen  town,  and  so  decide  the  issue  of  a 
Restoration  of  the  Monarchy  now  so  grievously  imperilled. 
Mirabeau  still  grew  in  power,  still  spoke  in  his  loudest  tones, 
still  watched,  and  drove  all  his  team  of  political  dupes  and 
Royal  clients,  still  remained  strongly  double.  Swearing  to 
one  that  he  had  all  ready  for  the  end  of  Monarchy  if  the 
King  should  fly;  writing  continually  (and  more  sincerely) 
to  another  his  plans  in  aid  of  such  a  flight;  asking  for 
yet  more  money  (on  the  2nd  of  March);  urging  a  further 
double-dealing  with  the  Assembly  in  a  secret  and  verbal 
message  to  the  King  (on  the  13th) ;  betraying  the  Jacobins, 
his  Jacobins,  in  a  private  letter  (on  the  21st).  Doing 
all  this  with  his  intrigue  fully  formed,  and  the  Royal 
Family  already  sheltered  under  the  wing  of  that  intrigue, 
Fate  entered. 


340  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

It  was  on  the  24th  of  March  that  Mirabeau  wrote 
his  last  letter  to  La  Marck.  His  friend  had  mining 
rights  in  the  Kingdom:  the  new  mining  laws  were 
down  for  debate  that  week.  He  promised  to  speak, 
and  on  the  morning  of  the  27th  he  called  on  La 
Marck  upon  his  way  to  the  manege;  he  was  faint 
and  compelled  to  rest  awhile  upon  a  couch  there,  but  he 
rallied  and  went  on  to  the  Parliament.  It  was  Sunday. 
The  streets  were  full  of  people :  he  was  recognised,  followed 
and  cheered. 

Upon  that  27th  of  March  he  spoke  more  than  once:  his 
ill  ease  was  not  apparent.  On  the  28th  he  was  struck. 
But  even  so  lying  in  his  bed,  for  the  next  three  days,  in  spite 
of  an  increasing  agony,  he  made  of  his  moments  of  respite 
occasions  for  set  wrords,  usually  well  chosen,  pagan,  proud, 
memorable,  and  a  trifle  affected.  A  crowd  in  the  street 
without  kept  guard  and  silence.  A  crowd  was  about  his 
bed  continually.  Talleyrand,  reconciled,  came;  La  Marck, 
who  loved  him,  came  repeatedly  —  and  a  hundred  others. 
He  spoke,  and  they  spoke,  of  Death,  as  a  matter  for  con- 
verse, often  for  jest.  La  Marck  quizzed  him:  "Oh,  you 
connoisseur  of  great  death-beds ! "  Talleyrand  told  him  that 
he  came  "like  the  populace,  to  hear."  A  man  who  loved  him 
said  well,  "that  he  acted  death  as  a  great  actor  upon  a 
national  stage."  Astounding  courage,  and  more  astound- 
ing silence  upon  the  thing  he  had  never  cared  for  or  believed: 
all  the  greatness  and  all  the  void  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  here.  He  admitted  God,  however,  and  rallied  his 
good  doctor,  a  materialist  —  as  then  were  all,  and  still 
are  most,  experts  in  viscera:  the  days  were  sunlit, 
and.  the  sun  reminded  him  of  God.  So  for  four  days ; 
upon  the  fifth  day,  the  2nd  of  April,  at  half-past  eight 


MIRABEAU  341 

in  the  morning,  those  watching  his  last  and  silent  agony, 
saw  that  he  was  dead. 


Many  modem  historians  have  said  that  the  death  of 
Mirabeau  affectedjbut  little  the  plans  that  had  been  made 
for'flight. 

It  is  an^error,.  The  death  of  Mirabeau  changed  all,  and 
it  was  one  more  of  those  hammer-blows  of  Fate  exactly 
coincident  with  the  sequence  of  the  Queen's  weird. 

It  is  true  that  the  flight  was  already  long  arranged.  It  is 
true  that  its  very  details  were  planned  for  the  most  part  long 
before  Mirabeau  died.  Nevertheless,  had  Mirabeau  lived, 
the  whole  thing  would  have  had  a  different  issue;  and  for 
this  reason,  that  Mirabeau  dominated  all  that  world  — 
not  only  the  world  of  the  Court  but  also  the  world  of  Par- 
liament, and,  in  some  indirect  way,  the  world  of  Opinion  as 
well  —  by  Will.  Any  action  that  the  Court  had  taken  with 
Mirabeau  alive  and  active  would  have  been  bent  to  Mira- 
beau's  plan,  and  even  if  the  flight  had  been,  not  (as  he  coun- 
selled) to  Compiegne,  but  to  Montmedy  and  the  frontier, 
Mirabeau  would  have  forced  at  once  its  success  and  a  con- 
sequent civil  war.  He  would  have  permitted  no  departure 
without  being  privy  to  it;  he  would  have  sworn,  shouted, 
cajoled  and  persuaded  doubly  upon  either  side — for  Mira- 
beau was  a  soldierly  man;  he  had  a  plan  and  could  use 
men  by  ordering.  He  could  use  them  for  the  achievement 
of  a  fixed  end  which  was  now  the  salvation  of  the  Monarchy; 
for  he  believed  the  Monarchy  to  be  the  skeleton  and  frame- 
work of  France — and  this  creative  light  of  the  revolution 
around  him  seemed  to  him  a  mere  mist  and  dazzle.  Great 
as  he  was,  I  repeat  it,  the  Revolution  seemed  to  him  to 


342  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

be  drifting  towards  an  Anarchy.  He  was  like  a  landsman 
who  may  be  brave  and  dommSkring  but  who  shudders  when 
he  first  comes  across  the  temper  of  the  sea. 

But  what  might  have  happened  is  but  hypothesis.  For 
Mirabeau  died;  and  Mirabeau  once  dead  it  was  necessarily 
certain  that  the  Court,  left  to  itself,  should  attempt  to  preserve 
not  Monarchy  but  merely  the  Court.  Mirabeau  living,  that 
determination  of  theirs  to  save  their  bodies  would  have  done 
no  harm,  and  the  eagerness  of  the  Queen  to  get  away  to  the 
neighbourhood  of  friends  would  have  been  used  as  human 
intelligence  uses  the  instinct  of  animals.  Mirabeau  dead,  that 
force  ran  ever  along  its  own  blind  line,  attempting  merely  to 
save  the  persons  of  the  King  and  Queen  and  their  children. 
Attempting  so  small  a  thing,  it  happened  to  fail.  But  on 
the  failure  or  success  of  that  attempt  the  largest  things 
depended. 

It  was,  as  we  have  seen,  upon  Saturday,  the  2nd  of  April, 
that  Mirabeau  died,  and  had  said  in  dying  that  there  went 
with  him  the  las_^  shred  of  jh^^Monarchy. 

The  Sunday  following  his  deathwas~TEaF  upon  which 
the  Schismatic  Priests  said  their  first  Masses  in  every  par- 
ish of  the  city. 


I  have  not  space  to  reiterate  in  this  volume  the  vast 
issue  involved.  I  have  sufficiently  emphasised  and  shall 
further  emphasise  the  profound  truth  that  gvery— .Civij 
Revolution  is^  theological  at  bottom,  because,  at  bottom, 
it  must  be  based  upon  a  divergent  pf  pbilpgnpjiy  between 
the  philosophies  of  the  old  order  and  the  new.  A  chance 
test  of  philosophy  thrown  at  random  into  the  Revolu- 
tionary movement  had  separated  men  suddenly  and  was 


MIRABEAU  343 

rifting  the  State  asunder;  for  a  fortnight  Paris  raged  upon 
the  Nationalisation  of  the  Church. 

I  will  not  detain  the  reader.  There  was  here  one  of 
those  double  duties  where  the  wisest  get  most  bewildered 
and  the  most  sincere  go  the  furthest  astray.  Let  the 
reader  remember  (difficult  as  it  is  to  do  so  in  the  religious 
atmosphere  of  our  time)  that  with  the  educated  of  that 
day  Religion  was  dead  —  with  the  populace  of  Paris  even 
more  dead.  The  thing  was  a  mere  emblem.  Its  last 
little  flickering  light  (which  we  have  since  seen  to  grow 
to  so  great  a  flame)  was  not  comprehended,  save  as  a  polit- 
ical institution,  by  the  great  bulk  of  the  Parliament,  by  the 
professions,  by  the  workers;  the  very  beggars  in  the  street 
despised  the  Faith,  and  the  shrines  were  empty.  You 
were  a  priest  or  one  of  the  very  few  Mass-goers?  Then 
you  were  suspected  of  supporting  the  old  forms  of  civil 
polity!  After  the  Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy  you 
deliberately  refused  to  take  a  reasonable  oath  to  the  Con- 
stitution and  the  new-born  Liberty  of  Men  ?  Then  you 
were  a  traitor,  and  a  silly  traitor  at  that.  Let  it  be  remem- 
bered that  at  this  moment  Religion  had  no  warriors.  All 
the  vast  rally  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  undreamt  of. 
The  bishops  were  place-hunters  full  of  evil  living;1  the 
Creed  an  empty  historic  formula:  a  convention  like  the  con- 
ventions of  "party"  in  England  to-day.  The  reader 
must  see  this,  in  spite  of  all  the  nineteenth  century  may 
have  taught  him  to  the  contrary,  or  he  will  never  see  the 
Revolution. 

In  such  a  crisis  fago  _f  actors,  quite  uncomprehended, 
stood  like  rocks  —  they  were  but  small  minorities:  so  are 
rocks  small  accidents  in  the  general  sea.  The  one  was 

1  Consider  J^Jgr.  of  Narbonne.    His  mistress  was  his  own  niece. 


344  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

that  littfe  group  of  people  who  still  practised  the  united 


—  and  it  just  so  happened  that  of  these 
the  Kinff  was  one,  Joisi  sister  another,  and,  from  the  begin- 
ning in  her  light,  easy  way,  latterly  with  increasing  depth, 
his  wife^  a  third  ;  the  other  factor  was  the  mass  of  the  hum- 
bler Glergy.  They  felt  as  by  an  instinct  the  note  of  unity; 
they  refused  to  subscribe:  to  all,  or  nearly  all,  the  bishops 
it  was  —  for  the  most  part  —  a  matter  of  rank  and  policy 
to  resist  the  Bill;  to  the  two-thirds  of  the  country  Clergy 
to  resist  the  Law  was  loyalty  to  our  Lord. 

What  the  King  felt  in  that  quarrel  we  all  know.  Marie 
Antoinette,  in  spite  of  her  devotion,  was  never  able  to 
neglect  the  human,  the  purely  temporal,  the  vulgarly 
political  aspect  of  the  quarrel.  Her  husband,  sincerely 
sympathetic  though  he  was  with  the  French  temper,  thought 
mainly  of  the  Divine  interests  in  the  matter;  though  he 
thought  slowly  and  badly,  that  was  his  thought.  The 
populace,  the  politicians  —  all  the  world  —  saw  nothing 
whatsoever  in  the  Catholic  resistance  but  a  dodge  devised 
by  privilege  to  put  a  spoke  in  the  wheel  of  the  Revolution. 
And  Paris  especially,  having  for  so  long  abandoned  relig- 
ion, raged  round  the  refusal  of  the  priests. 

It  is  pitiful  to  read  how  small  a  rally  the  Faith  could 
make!     One  chapel   in   all   Paris  was  hired  for  the  true 
Mass  to  be  said  therein,  and  handfuls  here  and  there  put 
forward  a  timid  claim  to  approach  the  only  altar  which 
Rome  acknowledged.     I  say  it  for  the  third  or  for  th? 
fourth  time,   to-day  we   cannot  understand  these  things 
for  the  Resurrection  of  the  Catholic  Church  stands  betweei 
us  and  them;  but  to  this  Paris  on  that  Lenten  Sunday,  tb3 
3rd  of  April,  1791,  the  presence  of  the  Schismatic  Clerg;, 
each  in  his  parish,  was  a  plain  challenge  launched  again& 


MIRABEAU  345 

the  Crown,  and  it  was  nothing  more:  the  attachment  of 
the  Court  to  the  Roman  Unity  seemed  to  Paris  a  mere 
political  intrigue,  odious  and  unnational  and  stinking  of 
treason.  For  a  fortnight  the  Parisian  anger  raged,  and 
the  17th  of  April  was  Palm  Sunday. 

It  has  become  a  rule  for  those  who  are  in  communion 
with  the  Catholic  Church  that  they  should  receive  the 
Sacraments  at  least  once  a  year,  and  that  at  Easter  or  there- 
abouts; a  rule  defined,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  during  the 
struggle  with  the  Lutheran  —  that  latest  of  the  great  heresies. 
This  rule  the  King  had  satisfied,  and  on  that  Palm  Sunday 
had  taken  Communion  in  his  Chapel  from  a  priest  who 
had  not  sworn  the  Civic  Oath.  All  the  customary  talk 
of  some  religious  necessity  by  which  he  was  in  conscience 
compelled  to  leave  Paris  is  balderdash.  The  attempt  he 
made  the  next  day,  the  Monday,  to  leave  the  city  in  order 
to  spend  the  Easter  days  in  the  suburban  palace  of  St. 
Cloud  was  purely  political.  Religion  had  no  part  therein. 
It  cannot  be  determined  to-day  —  unless  indeed  further 
evidence  should  come  before  us  —  how  much  the  mere 
desire  to  prove  a  liberty  of  action  on  the  part  of  the  Court, 
how  much  a  sort  of  challenge  sure  to  be  defeated,  how 
much  a  hope  that  escape  would  be  easier  from  a  subur- 
ban point,  entered  into  this  plan;  but  it  is  quite  certain 
that  the  Body  of  the  Lord  and  His  Resurrection  had  noth- 
ing whatsoever  to  do  with  it.  And  when  upon  Monday 
of  Holy  Week,  the  18th  of  April,  a  little  before  noon,  the 
royal  family  got  into  their  carriage  to  drive,  as  was  their  con- 
stitutional right,  to  the  neighbouring  palace,  those  few  miles 
away  where  the  populace  could  not  surround  them,  a  crowd, 
organised  as  were  these  crowds  of  the  Revolution,  held  them 
all  around.  The  scene  has  been  repeated  too  often  to  be 


346  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

repeated  here;  one  character  marks  it — it  is  one  of  profound 
importance.  For  the  JJrsLtjme  armed  and  disciplined  Jorce 
was  wholly  upojijhe  side  of  the  Revolution. 

The  Militia  whiclT'Ea  Fayelle  hacTTormed  were  with  the 
people,  and  the  common  will  of  that  great  mob  was  present 
also  in  the  'men  who  bore  arms.  It  had  not  been  so  in  any 
of  the  movements  antecedent  to  this,  unless  we  admit  the 
sharp  national  anger  of  the  loose  and  almost  civilian  "French 
Guards"  against  the  hired  German  Cavalry  in  July,  1789. 
Hitherto  there  had  been  a  distinction  between  the  people  at 
large  and  that  portion  of  the  people  \vhich  was  armed  and 
disciplined,  a  distinction  which  now  broke  down  because 
to  the  French  temper  on  this  Monday  of  Holy  Week,  1791, 
the  issue  was  too  grave  for  such  distinctions.  The  national 
King  must  be  kept  in  Paris,  the  people  would  noJLlet  him 
leave,  much  as  a  man  will  not  let  his  money  go  out  of  his 
sight  or  out  of  his  control. 

Let  it  be  noted  that  here,  as  is  invariably  the  case  through- 
out the  history  of  the  French  people,  the  general  mass  had 
easily  learned  a  secret  thing:  all  the  bamboozlement  had 
failed  —  as  it  is  failing  to-day  in  spite  of  the  financial  press, 
the  Secret  Societies,  and  every  other  instrument  of  fraud. 
The  vast  crowd  which  hustled  round  the  King's  carriage 
knew  and  freely  repeated  his  project  of  invasion  which  had 
now  been  so  carefully  and,  as  it  was  thought,  so  secretly 
plotted  for  six  months. 

The  French  people  are  accustomed  to,  and  have,  as  it 
were,  an  appetite  for,  duels  in  the  dark  where  one  of  the  two 
combatants  must  die.  There  was  determination  upon 
the  one  side  —  without  proof  —  that  the  King  desired  to 
fly  and  must  be  restrained.  There  was  determination 
upon  the  other  —  accompanied  by  frequent  denial  —  that 


MIRABEAU  347 

the  King  should  escape  to  the  French  frontier  and 
should  be  free. 

Not  the  next  day,  but  the  day  after,  Wednesday  in  Holy 
Week,  the  Queen,  the  Queen  herself  pulled  the  trigger. 
All  that  blind  force  of  desire  for  the  mere  personal  safetY_j>f 
her^family,  which  Mirabeau  would  have  controlled,  but 
which  in  her  unguided  hands  was  an  jinreasoning  torrent, 
impelled  her  action.  She  wrote  to  Mercy  that  her  very  life 
was  in  danger  and  that  the  business  must  be  done  with  next 
month  at  the  latest.  She  mentioned  the  place  of  flight, 
Montmedy. 

Eight  weeks  followed,  during  which  every  effort  of  the 
royal  family  was  directed  to  the  achievement  of  a  mere  flight. 

The  limits  of  these  pages  do  not  permit  me  the  many 
details  which  could  make  of  that  early  summer  a  long  book 
of  intrigue.  When  the  thing  had  failed  each  had  his  excuses, 
and  Bouille  would  have  it  that  with  a  docile  obedience  on 
the  part  of  the  Court  he  could  have  saved  the  Court.  It 
may  be  argued  that  if  the  King  had  gone  by  way  of  Bheims 
he  would  have  escaped.  It  may  be  argued  that  the  delay  of 
twenty-four  hours  (which  certainly  did  take  place)  made 
such  and  such  a  difference.  All  these  arguments  fall  to 
the  ground  when  it  is  considered  that  the  King  did  escape 
from  Paris,  escaped  easily  along  the  road  to  the  frontier, 
was  safe  and  trebly  safe  until,  as  will  be  seen,  two  accidents, 
wholly  incalculable  and  each  a  clear  part  of  Fate,  broke 
that  immemorial  Crown  of  the  French  Monarchy.  The 
first  (as  will  be  seen)  was  the  grrpr  — jf  it  was  an  error — 
made  by  young  Choiseul^  on  the  Chalons  road  —  a  mere 
mechanical  one ;  the  second  —  much  more  miraculous  — 
was  the  rute  of \J)rniif>tn  galloping  in  a  dark  night  under 
a  covered  moon  wildly  through  the  very  difficult  ridgeway 


348  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  Argonne,  and  even  that  miracle  only  just  came  off  by 
fifteen  minutes.  It  was  not  delay,  whether  of  twenty- four 
hours  or  of  a  fortnight  which  brought  them  back  to  Paris. 
It  was  that  other  force  for  which  we  have  no  name,  but  which 
one  may  call  if  one  likes,  Necessity  or  Something  Written. 

Fersen,  who  loved  the  Queen  and  whom  the  Queen  loved, 
had  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  plot,  had  seen  all  the  con- 
spirators, and  brought  to  its  climax  everything.  He  was 
now  to  risk  his  life.  The  great  travelling-carriage  called 
a  berline  (which  easily  held  three  people  upon  either  side), 
was  waiting  in  its  shed  in  the  stables  of  the  house  he  had 
hired,  as  the  summer  solstice  —  a  date  fatal  to  the  Bourbons 
—  was  approached.  Fersen  himself  in  disguise  was  to 
drive  them,  disguised  also,  from  their  palace  by  night  in  a 
cab  to  where  that  travelling-coach  awaited  them.  Their 
passports  were  ready;  the  children's  governess,  the  Duch- 
ess of  Tourzel,  was  to  play  the  part  of  the  chief  personage 
and  to  be  called  the  Baroness  of  Korff.  The  Queen  was  to 
be  the  governess  of  her  children,  and  the  King  her  valet,  his 
sister  a  maid;  the  children  were  to  be  Madame  de  Korff 's 
children,  and  the  Dauphin  was  dressed  as  a  girl  and  called 
by  a  girl's  name. 

There  are  a  few  square  yards  in  Paris  which  should  be 
famous  in  history.  Here  Joan  of  Arc  fell  in  her  failure  to 
force  the  Western  gate  of  the  city.  Here  to-day  is  the  hotel 
called  the  Hotel  de  Normandie,  frequented  by  foreigners, 
and  opposite  is  a  money-changer's  booth.  Here  the  Rue 
St.  Honore  crosses  the  Rue  de  1'Echelle.  There1  at  mid- 

1  To  be  accurate,  the  exact  spot  was  a  few  steps  to  the  south  of  the  present  crossing,  and  much  about  the 
middle  of  the  modern  Rue  de  1'Echelle,  and  opposite  No.  6  of  that  street. 


FACSIMILE    OF  FIRST  PAGE   OF  THE  ADDRESS  TO  THE 

FRENCH  PEOPLE 
Written  by  Louis  XVI.  before  his  flight 


MIRABEAU  349 

night  on  the  20th  of  June,  Fersen,  dressed  as  a  coachman, 
was  waiting  with  his  cab  to  drive  them  to  the  travelling-coach 
which  awaited  them  at  the  eastern  boundary  of  the  city. 
He  had  already  visited  the  palace  to  make  all  sure.  His 
disguise  was  good,  his  acting  excellent.  His  love  compelled 
him.  He  took  snuff  with  the  other  cabbies.  He  waited 
resignedly.  The  lights  went  out,  midnight  approached, 
and  first  one,  then  another  of  certain  beings  approached  him 
down  the  dark  alley  that  led  from  the  courtyards  of  the 
palace.  The  King  came,  and  the  Royal  children,  their 
governess,  and  the  King's  sister.  Last  of  all,  and  after  some 
delay,  the  Queen.  All  of  them  had  escaped  safely  from 
what  was  the  chief  barrier  around  them  all  —  the  Militia 
Guard.  When  they  were  well  in  their  cab,  Fersen,  that 
devoted  man,  drove  them  in  a  leisurely  manner  to  the  gates 
of  the  city,  found  the  berline  drawn  up  on  the  highroad,  and 
with  it  two  Gentlemen  of  the  Guard  who  had  come,  dis- 
guised in  old  yellow  liveries,  to  act  as  postilions,  while  a  third 
had  ridden  on  to  the  first  post-house.  Fersen  had  the  berline 
driven  by  his  servants,  himself  upon  the  box,  and  so  reached, 
in  that  earliest  of  all  dawns  of  the  year,  the  first  post  and 
relay,  the  suburban  post-house  of  Bondy. 

There  was  light  in  the  North .  He  saw  before  him  at  that 
hour  the  free  road  to  the  frontier;  the  country  and  the 
simple  minds  of  subjects;  the  happy  past  returning;  the  end 
at  last  of  all  that  Parisian  fever,  and  the  chastisement  per- 
haps of  all  that  Parisian  violence  —  at  any  rate,  the  solution 
of  the  whole  affair.  His  friend  was  free. 


The  King  had  but   to  reach  the  garrisons  of  the  east, 
and  Austria  would  move,  the  last  of  the  regular  French 


350  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

armies  would  advance:  now  that  the  royal  person  was  no 
more  in  danger  from  such  a  march,  the  march  on  Paris 
would  begin. 

But  it  was  the  summer  solstice,  a  moment  ill-omened  to 
the  Bourbons. 


XIV 

VARENNES 

IOM  MIDNIGHT  OF  MONDAY,  JUNE  20,  179L  TO  JUST  AFTER  SEVEN 
ON  THE  EVENING  OF  SATURDAY,  JUNE  25,  1791 

IT  was  no  longer  night;  it  was  near  day,   the  brighten- 
ing air  smelt  of  morning.   The  links   of  the  harness- 
chains    clattered    a    little    as    the  relay    horses  were 
backed  against  the  pole  of  the  big  carriage.     Fersen  saun- 
tered to  the  carriage  window  of  that  side  upon  which  the 
Queen  sat.     He  called  out  loudly  her  supposed  mistress's 
isumed  name,  "Madame  Korff,"    saluted  her  and  turned 
to  go  on  his  lonely  cross-country  ride  to  Bourget  and  the 
Brussels  road,  by   which   he   also   purposed  to  fly.     But, 
iven  as  he  turned,   they  say  that  she   held  his    hand    a 
oment  and  slipped  upon  his  finger  a  ring.     It  was  a  ring 
if  yellowish  gold,  broad  and  heavy,  and  having 'set  in   it 
n  unknown  stone.     It  is  still  preserved.     Here  is  the  story 
»f  the  ring :  — 


It   was  again   the  20th  of  June  —  the  summer  solstice 
that  strikes,  and  strikes  again,  and  again  at  the  Bourbons 
nd  at  the  soldiers  of  the  Bourbons.     Nineteen  years  had 
assed  since  the  dawn  when  Fersen  had  left  the  Queen  at 
Bondy,  seventeen  since  he  had  broken  his  heart  at  her 
eath,  and  had  become  silent.     His  campaigns  had  for- 
bidden him  to  show  prematurely  the  effect  of  advancing  age; 
deed,  as  men  now  count  age,  he  had  not  reached  the 

351 


EogKd.  Mife 


ARIS 


2. 


'HATEAU  THIERRY 


Mor^ 


where  Commissioner 
met  the.  Royal  Family 
on  thtur  return 


jntmirail 


MAP    OF    THE    FLIGHT    TO    VARENNES    AND   THE    BETUKN 
352 


VARENNES  353 

limits  of  decline  —  his  fifty -fifth  year  was  not  accomplished. 
.  .  .  But  emotions  so  inhuman  and  so  deep  had  so  torn 
him  in  his  vigour  that  there  had  followed  a  complete  and  an 
austere  silence  of  the  soul:  he  had  long  seemed  apart  from 
living  men.  His  face  preserved  a  settled  severity,  his  eyes 
a  contempt  for  the  final  moment  of  danger:  that  moment 
had  come. 

He  was  Marshal  of  the  Forces;  the  populace  of  Stockholm 
was  in  rumour,  for  the  North  still  had  vigour  in  it,  impreg- 
nated from  France.  He  had  been  torn  from  his  carriage, 
chased  from  the  refuge  of  a  room,  and  now  stood  bleeding 
on  the  steps  of  the  Riddenholm  alone  (the  Squires  were 
within  the  church,  barricaded:  they  had  left  him  outside 
to  die).  The  populace,  hating  him,  hated  even  more  a 
ring  which  they  saw  large  and  dull  upon  his  finger,  for 
they  said  among  themselves  that  the  ring  was  Faery,  and 
that  death  issued  from  its  gem  whenever  it  was  held  for- 
ward; Death  flashed  from  it  and  struck  whomsoever  it  was 
turned  upon.  Charles  Augustus  himself  had  seen  it  upon 
parade;  it  had  lowered  upon  him,  and  he  had  fallen  dead 
from  his  horse.  .  .  .  Fersen,  so  standing,  wounded  and 
alone,  with  the  mob  roaring  round  the  steps,  held  his  sword 
drawn  in  his  right  hand  —  but  the  ring  upon  his  left  was  a 
better  weapon,  and  no  one  dared  come  forward. 

At  last  a  traitor  (since  there  is  a  traitor  in  every  tragedy), 
a  servant  of  his  who  had  turned  fisherman,  drew  other 
fishermen  round  him  and  whispered  to  them  to  gather 
stones :  thus,  from  a  distance,  standing  upon  the  steps  above 
them,  Fersen  was  stoned  and  died. 

When  he  was  quite  dead  the  populace  drew  round  his 
body,  but  they  would  not  go  too  near,  and  even  as  they 
approached  they  shielded  their  eyes  from  the  ring.  But 


354  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

this  traitor,  Zaffel,  bolder  than  the  rest,  went  forward  also 
with  an  axe,  and,  shielding  his  eyes  also,  he  hacked  the 
finger  off.  The  people  cheered  as  they  would  cheer  a  man 
that  had  plucked  a  fuse  from  a  shell.  He  ran,  with  his  head 
still  turned,  to  the  riverside,  and  he  threw  the  finger  with 
the  Queen's  ring  upon  it  far  out  into  the  stream. 

Next  day  Stockholm  was  as  calm  as  though  there  had 
been  no  evening  tumult.  Zaffel  at  early  morning  took  his 
boat  out  upon  the  cold  lake  water  by  a  pleasant  breeze,  anc| 
pointed  up  river:  he  had  a  plan  to  fish.  When  he  had  left 
the  many  islands  of  the  town  behind  him  and  had  passed 
into  a  lonely  reach  of  pine-trees,  he  felt  a  gentle  shock  upon 
the  keel,  and  the  boat  stood  still.  .  .  .  He  went  forward  to 
the  bows  and  looked  over;  he  could  see  nothing  but  very  deep 
green  water  bubbling  below.  As  he  came  back  aft  the 
masthead  caught  his  eye,  and  there,  clasping  it,  was  a 
severed  hand;  the  blood  vhich  was  apparent  at  the  wrist 
was  not  running.  The  hand  grasped  the  trunk  of  the  mast 
with  rigour,  and  Zaffel,  as  he  saw  it,  shuddered,  for  one 
finger  of  that  hand  was  gone. 

The  boat  went  forward  in  spite  of  the  tide  and  aslant 
the  wind,  with  the  sheet  loose  and  the  sail  at  random,  and 
he  in  the  boat  could  feel  for  hours  that  the  impulsion  of 
its  course  was  from  the  masthead  to  which  he  no  longer 
dared  look  upwards.  The  boat  cut  steadily  across  the 
eddies  of  the  Moelar.  At  times  he  tried  the  tiller,  but  he 
found  the  fixed  movement  unresponsive  to  his  helm. 

There  is  no  darkness  in  the  North  at  this  season,  but 
a  twilight  which,  if  there  are  clouds,  fades  from  the  grey 
of  evening  to  the  grey  of  dawn;  he  had  sat  cold,  crouching 
in  the  stern  of  his  boat,  throughout  all  the  hours  of  the  day, 
and  now  this  grey  twilight  was  upon  him.  In  the  midst 


VARENNES  355 

of  it  he  saw  far  up-stream  a  white  rock  from  which, 
as  it  seemed  to  him,  some  phosphorescence  glowed  unnatural, 
and  in  the  midst  of  that  light,  upon  a  ledge  of  the  stone,  was 
the  ring.  He  took  it,  as  at  a  command;  then  at  last  he 
dared  look  up  at  the  masthead.  He  saw  the  hand,  now 
whole,  relax  and  change  and  disappear,  and  he  felt  the  boat 
go  free,  turn  and  drift  down  stream. 

When  he  was  back  upon  the  quays  of  Stockholm,  all  his 
body  trembling  with  a  fast  of  twenty-four  hours  and  with 
the  cold  of  the  morning,  his  neighbours,  as  they  caught 
the  mooring  rope,  asked  questions  of  him.  He  answered 
them  with  meaningless  songs,  and  then,  as  the  vision 
returned,  with  pointings  and  terror.  He  was  mad. 

They  took  him  off  to  the  Bethel  beyond  the  stream. 
On  the  Knights'  Island,  within  the  church  of  Riddenholm, 
the  Squires  who  had  deserted  Fersen  upon  the  day  before 
were  at  that  moment  gathered  round  the  coffin  to  do  hon- 
our to  his  burial;  and  upon  the  pall  they  noticed  (some  cur- 
ious, some  indifferent)  the  broad  band  of  yellowish  gold 
and  the  unknown  stone. 

When  it  came  to  the  burial,  the  grave-diggers  dared  not 
put  it  into  earth  as  they  should  have  done;  they  gave  it  to 
his  family.  With  them  it  still  remains,  to  do  evil  and  dis- 
turb his  sleep. 


From  Bondy  the  great  carriage  went  forward  under  the 
growing  light  of  the  day.  At  Claye  a  cabriolet  with  the 
Queen's  waiting  women  joined  them  and  followed  the 
berline.  That  increasing  light  forbade  the  family  to  sleep; 
they  settled  in  comfort  upon  the  broad  and  padded  seats  of 
white  velvet,  leaning  back  into  them,  and  every  word  they 


356  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

said  revealed  the  enlarging  confidence  of  their  souls.  The 
King  felt  himself  already  upon  horseback;  the  Queen  and 
the  Duchess  repeated  the  roles  they  were  to  play  on  what- 
ever little  public  occasions  the  rapid  journey  might  involve 
them  in.  The  Duchess  as  Madame  Korff,  in  whose  name 
the  transport  had  been  made  out;  the  Queen  as  her  gover- 
ness —  and  so  forth.  They  went  rapidly  in  that  mixed 
landscape  of  wood  and  market-garden,  and  half -continuous 
village  which  still  marks  the  confines  of  Paris  and  of  the 
influence  of  Paris.  Now  they  were  in  the  open  country, 
with  Paris  quite  forgotten,  now  in  a  district  with  a  dialect 
of  its  own  —  sure  test  of  honesty  and  of  freedom.  The 
countrysides  were  awake,  the  mowers  were  in  the  field, 
the  road  was  down  among  the  narrow  pastures  of  the 
Marne,  and  at  last  in  Meaux,  where  for  the  first  time  they 
halted  for  a  relay. 

So  near  to  Paris,  the  wealthy  equipage  and  its  suite 
attracted  no  curiosity,  while  prudence  still  restrained  the 
travellers  from  showing  themselves  in  the  market-square, 
fatigued  as  they  may  already  have  been  by  a  continuous 
travelling  of  now  over  five  hours  —  for  it  was  past  six 
and  the  town  was  astir  by  the  time  the  berline  and  the 
cabriolet  had  rumbled  in.  To  this  concurrence  of  good 
accidents  the  neighbourhood  of  the  capital  added  another 
element,  for  the  posting  station  of  Meaux  was  so  used  to  the 
continual  passage  of  considerable  travellers  (how  many  of 
the  emigrants  had  it  not  re-harnessed!)  that  not  only  was 
the  whole  place  incurious,  but  also  the  relay  was  rapidly 
effected.  It  was  not  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  they  were 
off  again  upon  the  Chalons  road. 

By  the  route  they  had  chosen,  which  had  the  advantage 
that  it  was  somewhat  shorter  and,  what  was  of  even  more 


UNIVERSITY  I 
\^  OF  / 

VARENNES  357 

importance,  less  frequented  than  the  main  way  through 
Chateau  Thierry  and  Epernay,  the  distance  before  them  to 
Chalons,  the  next  large  town,  was  somewhat  over  seventy 
miles.  It  would  fill  the  whole  morning  and  more.  They 
fell  to  talking  to  one  another  with  some  little  anxiety  as  to 
what  might  happen  when  Chalons,  with  its  considerable 
population,  its  newspaper  and  its  activity,  was  reached. 
But  their  immunity  at  Meaux,  the  advent  of  a  pleasing, 
shaded  and  tolerable  day,  the  remote  countrysides  through 
which  they  passed  after  branching  off  the  main  road  at 
La  Ferte,  dulled  their  fears,  or  rather  exorcised  them. 
They  fell  to  eating — a  sort  of  picnic  without  plates,  cutting 
their  meat  upon  their  bread,  and  drinking  their  wine  from 
|  a  cup  passed  round.  No  sunlight  fell  upon  the  green 
blind  of  the  off-side  window  to  fatigue  their  eyes ;  no  reflec- 
tions of  excessive  heat  as  the  morning  rose  shone  from  the 
road  upon  the  white  velvet  of  the  cushions:  they  were  in 
comfort  and  at  ease. 

By  eight  they  were  upon  the  side-road  they  had  chosen; 
by  ten,  at  the  hour  when  the  peasants  were  reposing  under 
the  high  quadruple  rank  of  roadside  trees,  with  their  scythes 
at  rest  beside  them,  they  came  to  the  post  of  Viels-Maisons. 
They  were  behind  their  hour  —  a  trifle  —  but  they  were 
by  this  time  quite  secure  in  mind.  The  governess  had  given 
!  the  children  air,  and  had  walked  with  them  up  the  long 
I  hill  by  which  the  road  leaves  the  Marne  valley.  The  pace 
had  been  hardly  business-like,  perhaps  to  save  fatigue;  the 
King  had  sauntered  from  the  carriage  more  than  once, 
to  stretch  his  legs  at  the  post-houses;  there  were  even  occa- 
sions upon  which  he  had  spoken  to  the  little  groups  of 
peasants  that  surrounded  the  carriage  as  the  new  horses 
were  put  in.  For  a  moment,  indeed,  some  anxiety  — 


358  MARIE   ANTOINETTE 

very  probably  baseless  —  had  arisen  amongst  them  at 
sight  of  a  horseman  who  seemed  to  be  following  the  car- 
riages; the  children  and  their  governess,  who  were  on- the 
back  seat,  had  noticed  a  rider  far  down  the  road  behind 
them,  but  he  turned  off  and  was  seen  no  more. 

In  the  stables  of  Viels-Maisons  was  a  postilion  of  the 
name  of  Picard;  his  action  is  worthy  of  note  to  anyone 
who  would  comprehend  the  nature  of  this  journey,  the  emo- 
tions which  it  aroused  in  those  who  witnessed  it,  and  the 
tangle  of  authority  amid  which  the  flight  was  driven.  His 
action  is  worthy  of  note,  especially  to  those  who  would  see, 
as  it  is  necessary  to  see,  the  Champenois  peasantry  who  form 
the  background  of  all  the  picture.  He  first,  at  this  long  dis- 
tance from  Paris,  fifty  miles  and  more,  recognized  the  King. 

Sketch  Map  of  the  Road  from 

PARISTO  VARENNES 

June  21st.  1791 


PARIS  ...... ...»****  rf  t(l'l!l11  Milo« 


He  might  have  sold  the  knowledge;  he  might  have  gam- 
bled on  the  royal  family's  success,  have  whispered  his 
recognition,  and  have  waited  for  his  reward.  He  might 
have  presupposed  the  final  success  of  the  National  Gov- 
ernment, and  have  taken  immediate  steps  to  earn  its  grati- 
tude by  denouncing  the  King:  This  peasant  did  none  of 
these  three  things.  He  held  his  tongue. 

The  carriages  rolled  onward.  At  midday  when,  at 
one  of  the  posting  stations  in  that  great  bare,  dusty  plain, 
an  isolated  place,  the  King  had  strolled  out  again,  in  the; 


VARENNES  359 

interval  of  the  harnessing,  to  joke  with  a  knot  of  poor 
yokels  and  to  give  charity  to  them,  Monstier,  one  of  the 
Guards  who  were  acting  as  drivers,  ventured  a  timid 
remonstrance,  and  Louis  said  what  should  never  be  said 
within  the  hearing  of  the  gods  —  that  he  was  now  safe 
from  all  accidents.  When  he  had  said  this  he  continued 
to  talk  to  the  poor  about  him:  he  talked  of  their  crops 
and  of  the  hay  that  he  saw  tedding. 

It  is  possible  that  some  one  of  these  wondered  a  little 
overmuch  at  the  grand  people;  it  is  possible  there  had  been 
rumours:  but  if  any  beggar  or  mower  among  them  guessed, 
he  also  held  his  tongue  —  and  the  carriages  rolled  onward. 


The  day,  still  veiled  and  moderate,  was  at  its  height; 
it  was  two  o'clock,  or  a  little  later,  when  the  road  which  had 
hitherto  borne  every  mark  of  age,  took  on  the  appearance 
of  new  work,  the  line  of  trees  was  interrupted,  and  the  stones 
of  the  kerb  were  clean  and  freshly  sawn.  A  green  valley, 
then  but  imperfectly  drained,  though  but  slightly  below 
the  general  level  of  the  Champagne,  lay  across  its  course. 
.  .  .  An  older  track  had  skirted  this  marshy  land,  but 
for  now  six  years  the  road  had  cut  straight  across  the  doubt- 
ful soil  upon  a  great  embankment,  which  was  one  of  those 
new  engineering  works  of  which  the  reign,  for  all  its  financial 
embarrassment,  had  been  full.  Upon  this  embankment 
stood  (and  stands)  the  posting-house,  and  upon  such  a  site 
little  else  could  stand.  There  were  at  that  time  but  two 
other  roofs:  a  blacksmith's  forge  and  a  tavern.  The 
post  was  called  "the  Petit  Chaintry";  it  is  Chaintrix  to-day, 
and  a  hamlet  still.  Here  lived  an  elderly  man,  Lagny,  a 
widower,  with  his  daughters  and  one  son-in-law,  by  name 


360  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Vallet,  a  dangerous  lad,  for  he  had  travelled,  and  had 
been  himself  brought  up  in  the  noise  and  curiosity  of  an 
inn;  nay,  he  had  seen  Paris,  and  had  marched  with  the 
Federals  upon  the  Champs  de  Mars  the  year  before.  Only 
rarely  did  Vallet  visit  his  wife's  home — but  there  is  a  fate  and 
a  God.  In  this  lonely  plain  of  Champagne  where  no  one 
travels,  where  few  then  knew  Paris,  even,  let  alone  the 
Court,  this  man  happened  on  that  one  day  to  be  at  the 
stables  of  his  father-in-law's  posting-house;  he  happened 
also  to  be  by  nature — the  nature  of  a  townsman — garrulous 
and  touched  with  melodrama.  He  recognised  and  wor- 
shipped the  King.  From  that  moment  the  secret  was 
dissolved  —  and  in  loyalty  perhaps  half  an  hour  was 
consumed. 

No  record  remains  of  the  spreading  of  the  news,  but 
proof  remains  of  the  result.  Vallet  insisted  on  riding  him- 
self upon  the  leaders;  he  rode  hard,  and  twice  he  let  his 
horses  down,  breaking  harness;  so  that  an  hour  perhaps  was 
lost  by  his  hard  riding.  Before  even  the  berline  and  its 
attending  cabriolet  left  Chaintry,  Lagny  and  his  daughters 
had  been  told.  The  royal  family  had  not  denied  the 
recognition;  they  had  even,  in  reward  for  the  loyalty 
displayed,  bestowed  gifts  upon  the  innkeeper.  It 
is  certain  that  the  news  must  have  spread  through  the 
countryside. 

In  such  an  atmosphere  of  recognition,  nay,  of  open  depen- 
dence upon  the  loyalty  of  those  who  knew  them,  they  trav- 
ersed the  remaining  twelve  miles  of  road  and  entered 
Chalons,  where  alone  they  feared  arrest  and  in  whose 
crowds  only  detailed  forethought  and  plan  could  have 
preserved  them  unknown.  That  plan  and  that  forethought 
had  been  wholly  absent;  a  vague  instinct  of  its  necessity 


VARENNES  361 

had  in  the  morning  haunted  the  fears  of  the  travellers,  but 
now,  after  the  safety  and  isolation  of  the  many  long  hours 
from  Meaux,  it  was  forgotten. 

They  entered  the  big  town  at  four  o'clock;  the  two  carri- 
ages drove  clattering  through  its  streets ;  they  pulled  up  at  the 
posting-house  in  the  Rue  St.  Jacques.  Viet,  the  post-master 
came  out  to  see  to  the  horses.  A  crowd  gathered,  and  to  every 
one  in  that  crowd  and  to  Viet,  and  to  any  one  of  the  town 
who  cared  to  ask,  the  presence  of  the  King  was  perfectly 
well  known.  It  was  discussed  with  approval  or  disapproval; 
indeed,  the  journey  would  have  ended  here,  but  that  Viet 
himself,  true  to  the  character  of  the  peasant  (for  he  was 
peasant-born),  refused  all  risk.  Officially  he  knew  noth- 
ing; he  would  neither  detain  nor  speed  the  King;  he  was 
obstinately  silent.  Whether  Louis  won,  or  his  enemies, 
he,  at  least,  would  be  safe. 

As  he  was  buckling  the  last  of  the  fresh  horses,  a  man 
dressed  with  care  and  with  some  appearance  of  wealth, 
approached  him,  and  insisted  upon  what  was,  by  the  Con- 
stitution, his  duty,  but  Viet  gave  him  no  change  and  was 
still  silent.  The  man  dressed  with  care  and  with  some 
appearance  of  wealth,  failing  to  move  this  very  minor 
functionary,  went  off  to  the  Mayor,  Chorez  by  name; 
there  was  no  time  to  lose ;  horses  are  unharnessed  and  others 
harnessed  in  but  a  little  delay.  The  Mayor  was  as  silent 
as  Viet:  he  took  refuge  in  that  common  excuse  of  tem- 
porisers  and  cowards — he  demanded  "proof."  It  is  prob- 
able that  the  well-dressed  man  with  some  appearance  of 
wealth  went  off  upon  the  frontier  road.  We  do  not  know, 
for  we  do  not  even  know  his  name;  but  when  a  little  before 
five  o'clock  the  berline  had  halted  a  moment  at  the  foot 
of  a  rise,  surely  it  was  the  same  man  who  passed  it  rapidly 


362  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

and  muttered  to  the  royal  family  as  he  passed:  "You 
have  planned  ill!" 

The  town  of  Chalons  lies  upon  the  border  of  an  exten- 
sive plain  peculiar  in  French  history.  Here,  as  tradition 
will  have  it,  Attila's  army  was  destroyed  by  the  Romans 
and  the  Barbarians  whom  the  Romans  had  trained. 
It  is  a  wide  and  desolate  space,  which  the  prosperity  suc- 
ceeding the  Revolution  has  transformed,  but  which,  as  we 
watch  it  to-day  from  a  distant  height,  still  bears  something 
of  its  ancient  poverty  —  to  the  eye,  at  least  —  so  level  is  it 
and  so  treeless.  Far  off  to  the  eastward  runs  the  wooded 
wall  of  Argonne,  very  faint  and  small;  at  the  base  of  this, 
the  town  of  Ste.  Menehould. 

From  Chalons  to  Ste.  Menehould,  by  the  straight  road 
bridging  the  plain,  is  a  long  day's  march,  twenty-five 
miles  or  more:  and  there  is  very  little  between.  The  pas- 
sage of  this  bare,  direct  and  dusty  stretch  was,  the  fugitives 
might  imagine,  the  very  last  and  the  least  of  the  risks  they 
were  to  run.  Chalons,  which  alone  they  feared,  had  not 
detained  them,  the  emptiness  of  the  countryside  renewed, 
or  rather  rendered  absolute  their  confidence.  Within  an  hour 
they  would  be  at  the  bridge  of  Somme-Vesle,  an  utterly 
deserted  spot,  with  nothing  but  the  stables  of  the  post  to 
mark  it. 


At  this  point  of  their  successful  journey  let  the  reader 
note  in  what  order  the  guarding  of  the  flight  had  been  con- 
ceived by  Bouille. 

The  first  stages  of  it  —  till  beyond  Chalons  —  were  to  be 
quite  bare  of  soldiery,  lest  suspicion  should  arise  and  Paris 
receive  the  alarm;  but  once  well  past  Chalons,  the  hundred 


VARENNES  363 

miles  and  more  accomplished,  small  posts  of  cavalry, 
mostly  German  mercenaries,  were  to  be  placed  upon  one 
pretext  and  another,  at  intervals  along  the  way,  until  at 
Varenncs,  Bouille's  own  son  should  meet  the  fugitives 
with  his  troop,  and  eastward  from  Varennes  the  remain- 
ing miles  to  Montmedy,  which  was  their  goal,  they  would 
need  no  special  guard;  they  would  be  in  the  thick  of  Bouille's 
army.  The  first  of  these  small  posts  was  one  of  German 
mercenary  Hussars  under  the  Due  de  Choiseul,  a  nephew 
of  the  old  statesman  of  Louis  XV.  It  was  to  expect  the 
King  at  Somme-Vesle  at  one  —  giving  as  its  excuse  for  its 
presence  escort  for  a  convoy  of  bullion  —  but  an  exact 
keeping  of  the  time-table  was  urgently  necessary,  for  it 
would  be  perilous  for  the  foreign  troops  to  hang  about 
indefinitely  in  these  eastern  villages. 

It  was  at  the  lonely  post-house  of  Somme-Vesle,  then, 
that  the  first  soldiers  were  to  be  looked  for  by  the  King; 
there,  as  it  had  been  arranged,  the  first  Hussars  would 
be  seen,  posted  upon  the  lonely  road;  these  would  close  up 
immediately  behind  the  carriage  for  a  body-guard.  With 
each  succeeding  stage  of  the  shortening  trial  troop  after 
troop  would  join  that  barrier  and  increase  it,  Dragoons 
at  Ste.  Menehould,  more  at  Clermont,  till,  before  the  eve- 
ning gathered,  the  Royal  Family  would  have  between  them 
and  the  National  Government  of  Paris  or  the  young  patriots 
of  the  villages  of  the  Marne,  a  guard  of  their  own  soldiers, 
an  escort  warding  them  into  the  heart  of  the  frontier  army 
that  was  to  be  their  salvation. 

The  hour  passed  quickly  —  it  was  not  yet  six,  when  the 
King,  who  had  watched  with  his  old  interest  in  maps 
every  detail  of  the  road,  and  had  followed  it  with  the  guide- 
book upon  his  knee,  heard  the  brake  upon  the  wheels; 


364  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  slight  descent  ended,  and  the  carriage  drew  up.  A  long 
farmhouse,  with  stable  door  and  garden  gate  shut  tight 
and  with  no  head  at  a  window,  stood,  French  fashion,  all 
along  the  kerb.  They  looked  from  the  window,  noted  the 
desertion  of  the  fields,  the  silence  of  the  house,  and  the  broad 
paved  way,  and  asked  with  a  growing  anxiety  what  they 
feared  to  know,  the  name  of  the  place. 

The  third  Gentleman  of  the  Guard,  Valory,  who  had  at 
each  stage  gone  before  them  to  have  the  horses  ready, 
came  to  the  door  and  told  them  it  was  the  posting-house 
of  Somme-Vesle:  of  soldiers  not  a  sign;  a  few  peasants, 
slouching  off  to  the  fields. 


Long  before  the  King,  with  his  delays  of  loyalty  and  his 
breakdowns,  had  reached  Chalons,  just  upon  three,  under 
that  veiled  sky  and  upon  a  dip  of  that  monotonous,  dead 
straight,  white  road,  close  to  the  bridge  and  posting-house  of 
Somme-Vesle,  half  a  troop  of  Hussars  were  up  and  mounted. 
They  were  Germans,  but  their  foreign  gutterals  were  not 
heard  by  the  sleepy  ostlers  of  the  place,  for,  in  some  dis- 
order, the  little  knot  of  mounted  men  were  at  attention. 
At  their  head,  upon  his  finer  horse,  sat  Choiseul,  and  with 
him  Aubriot,  a  lieutenant  of  Dragoons,  and  old  Goguelat, 
used  to  commissariat,  to  organization,  and  to  plans.  They 
pointed  westward  up  the  Chalons  road,  looking  along 
its  right  line  between  the  parallel  perspective  of  its  trees. 
Choiseul  especially  strained  his  eyes  to  see  whether  no  ris- 
ing dust  or  no  distant  specks  of  a  large  vehicle  and  a  cabriolet 
following  might  announce  the  advent  of  the  King,  but  there 
was  no  sign  upon  the  road.  He  had  so  sat  his  horse  for  hours. 

It  was  eleven   when   his    light    travelling-carriage   had 


VARENNES  365 

trotted  up  to  the  stables,1  his  German  soldiery  had  joined 
him  before  noon,  and  by  one,  as  the  time-table  of  the  plan 
had  been  given  him,  the  berline  should  have  been  there. 

Two  o'clock  passed.  An  anxious  hour  of  waiting  brought 
no  news.  Yet  another  hour  of  growing  anxiety  upon  the 
soldiers'  part,  of  growing  suspicion  in  the  inn.  And  now 
it  was  three  o'clock;  but  there  was  no  sign  upon  the  road. 

Already  the  hoofs  of  these  fifty  mercenaries  had  been 
clattering  and  pawing  for  three  hours  and  more  round  and 
about  the  long  white  wall  of  the  posting-house.  The 
ostlers,  the  few  and  sleepy  ostlers,  were  not  fond  of  such 
visitors,  nor  were  the  peasants  in  the  fields. 

De  Choiseul  had  much  to  think  about  beside  the  punc- 
tuality of  the  fugitives  as  he  sat  his  horse  there,  straining 
his  eyes  along  the  road.  The  people  of  the  place  had 
asked  him  familiarly,  in  the  new  revolutionary  manner, 
what  this  body  of  horse  was  for.  They  might  have  added: 
"Why  was  it  foreign,  mercenary  horse?"  Such  a  ques- 
tion was  certainly  implied.  .  .  .  Why  had  an  army  of 
the  frontiers  thrown  out  a  point  of  its  cavalry-screen  towards 
its  base  against  all  the  known  rules  of  war,  instead  of 
towards  the  frontier  which  it  was  to  line  and  defend  ? 
.  .  .  If  it  was  for  orders  or  for  manoeuvring,  why  did 
they  stick  close  to  this  one  posting-house  ?  .  .  .  Troops, 
even  unsuspected  troops,  had  been  known  to  comman- 
deer food-stuffs  without  payment:  and  the  peasantry 
were  sullen. 

All  these  things  were  passing  in  the  minds  of  the  French 
peasants  there,  and  Choiseul,  who  was  also  French,  knew 
what  was  passing  through  their  minds.  There  was  some- 

1  He  had  come  from  Paris,  where  he  had  made  the  last  arrangements,  and  with  him  and  in  his  carriage  he 
1iad  brought  Leonard,  the  Queen's  hairdresser.  This  garrulous  fellow  he  had  sent  forward  down  the  road 
to  Montm&ly,  and  his  mysterious  hints  at  important  secrets  did  much  to  spread  the  news. 


366  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

thing  more:  the  countryside  was  armed.  The  Revolu- 
tion had  made  of  every  village  a  tiny,  ill-trained  but  fur- 
nished military  post;  of  every  market  town  a  section  with 
two  guns  and  a  team  of  gunners;  of  every  city  a  rough 
volunteer  garrison,  with  ammunition  and  with  arms,  without 
discipline  for  a  campaign,  but  in  a  momentary  scuffle  pos- 
sessed of  the  power  to  wound. 

Had  even  this  been  all,  what  Choiseul  did  might  not  have 
been  done ;  but  it  was  not  all.  There  had  always  been  present 
in  the  minds  of  these  officers  upon  the  frontier  the  per- 
manent indecision  of  fears  of  the  King.  The  date  of  the 
flight  had  been  postponed  and  postponed.  Choiseul  him- 
self, who  had  been  in  Paris  with  the  King  twenty-four 
hours  before,  was  aware  of  that  indecision  and  those  fears. 

It  was  three,  and  half -past  three,  and  later;  it  was  four  — 
and  still  nothing  appeared.  The  road  still  lay  empty  and 
silent;  the  posting-house  became,  if  possible,  a  trifle  more 
curious;  the  group  of  peasantry  increased:  the  men  were 
hustled.  Why  did  not  these  foreign  soldiers  unsaddle  ? 
What  was  the  urgency  ?  Choiseul  had  his  reply  ready,  his 
casual  piece  of  news:  "They  were  expecting  treasure,  and 
he  was  ordered  to  furnish  an  escort."  Why,  then,  let  them 
trot  up  the  road  to  meet  it!  .  .  .  With  every  quarter  of 
an  hour  the  strain  grew  greater. 

Four  o'clock  passed,  and  half-past  four.  It  was  for 
Choiseul  to  judge  exactly  (as  it  has  been  for  how  many 
another  soldier  commanding  thousands  where  he  com- 
manded fifty)  beyond  what  point  resistance  would  mean 
disaster.  From  time  to  time  a  peasant  crossed  a  distant 
field,  bearing,  perhaps,  a  message  to  his  armed  peers;  from 
time  to  time  an  ostler  would  ask  a  question  of  one  of  the 
Hussars  and  disappear;  bearing,  perhaps,  a  message  of  his 


VARENNES  367 


own,  and  Choiseul  thought,  "If  the  country  was  raised 
behind  him,  in  Argonne,  the  King  is  cut  off  and  lost!  " 

Among  so  many  Germans  a  French  soldier  was  easier  of 
approach.  The  post-master  of  the  place,  lounging  by,  made 
up  to  speak  to  Aubriot.  What  he  said  was  this:  "So  the 
King  is  expected  to  pass  ?  ...  At  least,  the  people 
are  saying  so."  .  .  .  He  sauntered  away. 

It  was  near  five.  By  Choiseul's  watch  it  was  a  trifle 
later  still.  The  situation  could  no  longer  be  borne,  and 
the  moment  for  retreat  had  come.  Ten  to  one  the  King 
had  not  started  after  all.  .  .  . 

As  Choiseul  left  he  saw  that  fresh  horses  were  put  into  his 
travelling-carriage ;  he  ordered  into  it  his  valet  and  the 
Queen's  hair-dresser,  Leonard,  whom  he  had  brought  from 
Paris;  he  gave  them  a  note  which  said  that  it  had  been 
necessary  for  him  to  abandon  Somme-Vesle,  and  that,  more- 
over, he  doubted  if  the  Treasure  would  come  that  day. 
He  himself  was  going  to  rejoin  the  General,  and  new  orders 
must  be  issued  on  the  morrow.  This  note  was  to  be  shown 
to  the  officer  in  command  at  Ste.  Menehould,  and  given 
to  the  officer  in  command  at  Clermont.  Thence  they  were 
to  post  for  Montmedy.  This  note  written  and  handed, 
open,  to  his  valet  and  Leonard,  Choiseul  saw  the  carriage 
| go;  and  when  he  had  seen  it  well  away  he  turned  rein, 
ordered  his  weary  Germans,  and  bent  reluctantly  eastward 
along  the  road  which  his  command  had  traversed  that 
morning. 

So  they  rode  back  till,  at  Orbeval,  Choiseul  took  a  guide, 
crossed  Neuville  Bridge  and  plunged  into  Argonne,  lest 
by  following  the  highroad  right  into  Ste.  Menehould  they 
might  raise  that  alarm  which  at  every  cost  it  was  his  duty 
to  allay.  ...  In  vain.  The  country  was  already 


368  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

awake:  that  rumour,  that  something  in  the  air  which  no 
historian  has  ever  traced,  had  preceded  him,  and  a  woman 
in  Ste.  Menehould  had  said  to  a  soldier  in  a  tavern  that  "the 
King  would  pass  that  way." 

In  this  way  was  the  post  of  Somme-Vesle  abandoned. 
It  was  in  the  neighbourhood  of  half-past  five  when  the 
cavalry  marched  out  and  up  the  slight  eastern  slope  of  the 
road;  just  hidden  by  the  brow  of  hill  behind  them  as  they 
left  the  spot  where  they  had  waited  it  for  so  long,  the  King's 
berline  had  begun  the  last  climb  before  the  descent  to  the 
post-house.  Fifteen  minutes  economised  on  the  Royal 
Family's  delays  would  have  saved  them. 


The  berline  waited,  as  it  had  waited  so  often  that  day; 
the  horses  were  changed  in  as  humdrum  a  fashion.  Within 
the  carriage  a  doubt  had  fallen  on  the  fugitives.  .  .  . 
It  was  a  lonely  house  in  a  lonely  dip  of  the  plain  with  a 
vast,  straight,  empty  road  rising  upon  either  slope  before 
it  and  beyond.  They  drove  on  to  Orbeval,  but  in  a  mood 
now  changed ;  they  passed  Orbeval  and  approached  the  long 
hill-forest  of  Argonne. 

It  was  already  full  evening;  the  clouds  upon  the  western 
horizon  had  lifted;  the  reddening  and  descending  sun 
shone  for  the  first  time  that  day  against  the  rise  of  the 
Argonne  woodland  ridge  and  upon  the  bare,  rolling  folds 
of  corn-land  and  of  mown  pasture  at  its  base. 

Under  the  level  shafts  of  that  sunset  the  belated  berline 
approached  Ste.  Menehould.  They  passed  the  lonely 
tavern  upon  the  height  called  "At  the  Sign  of  the  Moon"; 
they  saw  for  a  moment  upon  their  left  a  mill  not  yet  grown 
famous,  the  mill  of  Valmy;  the  shadows  lengthened,  and 


VARENNES  369 

just  as  the  sun  disappeared  they  rattled  full  speed  into  the 
main  square  of  the  town. 

The  green  blinds  were  up  to  admit  the  cool  of  the  even- 
ing. The  Queen  looked  from  her  window,  without  conceal- 
ment, and  saw  the  gossiping  and  curious  crowd  which  a 
French  town  collects  upon  its  public  place  at  the  end  of  day. 
She  saw  the  soldiers — some  of  them,  she  thought,  saluted;  she 
saw  their  officer.  He  came  up  and  addressed  her  respect- 
fully, in  his  garlic-accent  of  Beam.  He  certainly  saluted 
fully,  and  she  bowed  her  acknowledgment  of  the  salute. 
She  saw  and  heard  no  more,  unless  perhaps  she  saw,  on 
the  King's  side  and  through  the  open  window  of  it,  a  young 
man  still  heavy  with  the  swagger  of  the  dragoons  (for  he  had 
served),  and  still  insolent  with  the  brave  insolence  of  sol- 
diers; clear  in  eye,  hooked  in  nose,  bronzed,  short, 
alert  and,  as  it  were,  itching  for  adventure.  If  she  did 
see  this  figure,  she  saw  it  for  but  a  moment:  the  horses  were 
in,  the  whips  were  cracking,  the  carriage  was  on  the  move: 
he  had  thus  for  a  moment  passed  her  window,  coming  in 
from  the  fields,  where  he  had  been  mowing;  he  had  passed 
for  a  moment,  and  was  gone.  It  was  Drouet,  the  acting 
post-master  of  the  place,  and  the  son  of  the  old  post-master. 
He  had  noted  that  the  yellow  coach  was  huge  and  heavy; 
he  had  found  just  time  to  say  to  his  postilions,  "Don't 
kill  the  cattle";  then  he  had  gone  off:  it  was  but  a  moment 
of  time. 

They  were  off,  a  top-heavy  haystack  of  a  thing,  rolling 
full  speed  up  the  hill  beyond  the  river,  and  right  into  the 
advancing  darkness.  As  they  went,  rising  high  with  the 
road,  through  the  orchards  and  into  the  forest  and  the 
hills,  they  heard,  far  behind  them  one  pistol  shot,  and  then 
another,  the  distant  noise  of  a  crowd,  high  voices,  and  the 


370  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

shuffling  of  horse-hoofs.  But  the  cries  grew  fainter,  and 
they  had  soon  left  all  far  behind.  They  gained  the  com- 
plete silence  of  the  high  wood,  under  the  stars.  They 
began  the  ascent  of  Argonne. 

But  already  in  Ste.  Menehould  all  was  known.  The 
girl  who  had  said  "It  was  the  King,"  was  now  but  one  of 
many.  The  popular  Council  had  met,  and  hardly  had  it 
met,  and  hardly  had  the  crowd  outside  in  the  square  appre- 
ciated the  rumour,  when  those  came  in  from  Neuville 
village  who  had  an  hour  or  two  before  watched  the  move- 
ment of  Choiseul  and  his  Hussars,  and  the  retirement  of 
the  cavalry  over  the  bridge  of  Neuville  into  the  forest,  seek- 
ing Varennes.  Their  report  added  certitude  to  the  gen- 
eral clamour:  "Choiseul  and  his  Hussars  had  hung  about 
the  posting-house  of  Somme-Vesle  for  hours!"  "They  had 
taken  a  guide  and  were  in  the  woods  behind  Ste.  Menehould 
at  that  moment."  The  troops  in  Ste.  Menehould  itself 
must  have  the  same  purpose.  There  was  no  doubt  at  all 
it  was  the  King.  And  to  this  news  there  was  added  news, 
that  Choiseul  and  his  Hussars  were  keeping  in  touch  with 
the  main  road,  scouting  back  from  time  to  time,  ready  and 
watching. 

The  handful  of  cavalry  at  Ste.  Menehould  were  French, 
not  German.  When  Leonard  had  passed  through,  half  an 
hour  before,  and  had  shown  ChoiseuPs  note  to  the  officer 
in  command,  that  Captain  had  bid  his  men  unsaddle  and 
take  their  ease.  They  were  now  filled  with  the  evening's 
fraternity  and  wine.  There  was  an  attempt  to  gather  them 
against  the  townspeople.  It  failed.  And  as  the  twilight  les- 
sened one  resolution  after  another  was  taken  in  the  Town 
Hall,  with  the  rapidity  that  marked  the  action  of  the  Revo- 
lution everywhere,  from  Paris  to  the  smallest  village.  The 


VARENNES  371 

municipal  drum  beating  and  the  tocsin  noisy  against  the 
hills,  vote  after  vote  proceeded.  The  Captain  of  the  troop 
was  arrested;  the  troop  itself  disarmed.  The  despatch  of  a 
courier  to  pursue  and  intercept  the  King  was  decided, 
and  that  courier  chosen  and  named. 

It  was  upon  young  Drouet,  for  his  horsemanship  and  his 
courage,  that  the  choice  fell.  He  took  with  him  a  com- 
panion, Guillaume,  an  innkeeper,  such  as  he  himself  was, 
once  a  dragoon,  as  he  himself  had  been;  they  saddled  the 
last  two  horses  left  in  the  stable  and  thundered  off  up  the 
long  hill  that  rises  from  the  town  into  Argonne,  down  the 
sharp  ravine  of  the  Islettes  and  onward  along  the  great 
eastern  road  —  the  road  to  Metz  —  whither  all  thought  the 
King  was  bound.  An  hour  ahead  of  them  on  that  same 
road  rattled  the  cabriolet  and  rolled  the  huge  berline. 

There  was  a  moon,  but  the  clouds  covered  her.  The 
darkness  of  this,  the  shortest  night  of  the  year,  deepened 
for  its  brief  hours,  but  there  was  still  a  glow  in  the  north  as 
they  neared,  towards  ten  o'clock,  the  post  of  Clermont. 
Drouet  heard  voices  in  the  darkness  before  him;  it  was 
his  own  postilions  on  their  way  back  from  the  end  of  the 
stage,  and  Drouet  hailing  them  heard  that  the  travellers, 
when  the  relay  horses  were  harnessed,  had  given  the  order 
to  leave  the  main  Metz  road,  and  to  turn  up  northward 
to  Varennes. 

The  military  temper  of  this  people!  The  halt  had 
not  lasted  a  moment,  but  in  the  moment  Drouet  had  formed 
his  plan. 

He  had  not,  it  seemed,  a  stern  chase  before  him,  a  mere 
gallop  up  the  Metz  road.  The  quarry  had  doubled  and  along 
its  tracks  were  Guards.  There  were  troops  at  Clermont 
as  there  had  been  at  Ste.  Menehould;  there  would  now  be 


372  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

troops  every  few  miles  until  the  headquarters  of  the  treason 
should  be  reached;  it  was  his  business  to  warn  the  citizens 
against  Bouille,  to  avoid  the  outposts  of  that  commander, 
to  cut  by  a  corner  way  across  the  elbow  ahead  of  the  royal 


Drouets   track  through  the.  forest 

along  the   ridge    .—    —.  —  ,—.—>.    I 

Probable  track  of  DeChoiseuls  Hussars  —-._  —  -.  |j 

Scale  of  English  Miles 


Approximate,  point  at  which 
Drouet  left,  the,  High  Road 
/brcst 
.          '. ? 1 


carriages,  to  intercept  them  and  to  thwart  all.  He  took  at 
once,  therefore,  to  the  wood  upon  his  left;  he  took  it  where 
now  the  railway  most  nearly  approaches  the  road,  about 
half  a  mile  beyond  the  level  crossing  —  and  plunged  with 
his  companion  into  its  long,  deep  dries.  He  galloped  up 


VARENNES  373 

the  steep  to  a  farm  he  knew  upon  the  summit,  risking  holes 
and  fallen  trunks  of  trees.  Once  there  he  followed,  along 
the  crest  of  the  ridge,  a  green  lane  of  immemorial  age  that 
runs  along  the  summit.  It  was  well  past  ten.  Up  on  the 
ridge  of  the  forest  these  two  men  galloped  steadily  and  hard 
through  the  night,  with  high  trees  like  a  wall  on  either 
side.  Three  hundred  feet  below,  upon  the  open  plain  that 
skirts  the  wood,  the  berline  swayed  at  speed  along  the 
paved  highroad.  So  the  race  ran.  The  fugitives  slept 
unwarned  and  deeply  as  they  drew  on  to  Varennes  through 
the  silent  darkness.  On  the  hills  above,  with  every  beat 
of  the  hoof  upon  the  turf,  the  two  riders  neared  and  they 
neared.  Upon  who  should  win  that  race  depended  the 
issue  of  civil  war. 

On  the  issue  of  that  race  all  the  future  depended:  all 
France  and  all  Europe.  The  riders  had  eleven  miles  of 
rough  woodland  in  the  dark  to  cover,  an  hour  at  most  for 
their  ride.  Below  them  on  the  highroad,  with  a  start  of 
two  miles  and  more,  their  quarry  was  hurrying,  rolling 
to  Varennes.  If  the  wheels  and  the  smooth  road  beat 
them,  it  was  Austria  over  the  frontier,  France  without  gov- 
ernment, defeat,  and  the  end  of  their  new  world;  but  if 
they  in  the  woodlands  beat  the  wheels  on  the  smooth  road, 
then  the  Revolution  was  saved. 

Through  a  clearing  in  the  midst  of  the  tangled  under- 
growth the  two  riders  saw  before  them,  as  they  still  rode 
furiously,  the  glimmer  of  a  known  white  stone,  a  land- 
mark; they  sheered  down  a  ride  to  the  right:  the  wood 
ended  abruptly,  and  they  saw  below  them  the  lights  of 
Varennes  —  one  or  two  at  that  late  hour,  and  the  twinkle 
of  the  town  lamps  in  the  square  of  the  town.  The  grasses 
of  the  forest  were  dull  no  longer  under  the  anger  of  their 


374  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

ride:  they  clattered  on  a  highroad  for  a  moment,  next  in 
the  narrow  street  of  Blainville  Hill.  They  came  down 
upon  the  bridge  head  and  saw  the  dark  line  of  the  river;  they 
halted  the  sweating  beasts  and  strained  to  listen.  They 
heard  no  sound,  except  the  panting  of  their  mounts;  there 
was  no  rumbling  of  wheels,  no  distant  approach  of  riders, 
no  noise  of  cavalry.  It  struck  eleven  as  they  waited  so. 
They  had  been  beaten,  and  the  berline  had  already  passed 
the  town  and  its  one  bridge;  or  the  wheels  had  not  yet 
rumbled  in,  and  they  had  won.  It  struck  eleven  as  they 
waited  so. 

Guillaume  crossed  the  bridge  to  the  main  square  to  see 
what  he  could  find,  whether  indeed  they  had  come  too  late, 
and  whether  between  them  and  the  fugitives  was  now  cast 
abroad  that  compact  screen  of  cavalry  which  had  failed  at 
Somme-Vesle  and  at  Ste.  Menehould.  Drouet  stayed  on 
the  hither  side  of  the  bridge,  inquiring  among  the  taverns  of 
the  upper  town  if  any  had  seen  a  large  travelling-coach  go  by. 
It  seems  that  no  one  had  noticed  such  a  thing.  .  .  . 
Yet  the  berline  was  there. 

He  saw  it  suddenly,  up  the  steep  hill;  he  saw  the  two 
great  lights  of  it,  and  he  heard  the  postilions  protesting 
that  the  stage  was  finished,  that  they  were  not  bound  to  go 
down  the  hill,  that  their  mistress  at  Clermont  needed  the 
horses  early  next  morning  for  the  carrying  of  her  hay. 
But  even  in  the  midst  of  the  discussion,  though  he  could  not 
see  the  horses  in  the  darkness  under  the  houses,  he  could 
hear  the  skid  upon  the  wheels,  and  he  knew  that  the  heavy 
vehicle  had  begun  to  move.  He  ran  down  at  once  to  a 
little  inn  called  "The  Golden  Arm,"  burst  in  upon  a  group 
of  rustic  politicians,  and  warned  them  in  one  word  that 
a  large  carriage  would  next  moment  go  braked  and  slid- 


VARENNES  375 

ing  past;  that  carriage  would  hold,  he  said,  the  King,  their 
public  King  —  in  flight  for  the  frontier. 


The  military  temper  of  this  people!  Here  were  a  hand- 
ful of  men  in  the  black  darkness  of  the  now  moonless 
night,  with  not  five  minutes  in  which  to  make  the  decision 
that  should  transform  the  whole  polity  in  which  they  lived. 
Yet  they  saw  in  a  flash  —  and  Drouet  saw  clearest  of  them 
all  —  first,  that  the  high  town  was  not  occupied  with  troops, 
and  that  therefore  the  commanding  officers  and  those 
awaiting  the  King  must  be  in  the  low  town  beyond  the  river; 
secondly,  that  but  one  communication  connected  the  King 
and  his  rescuers,  and  that  that  communication  was  the  narrow 
bridge  across  the  Aire,  the  river  of  Varennes;  thirdly,  that 
they  could  gather  in  those  few  minutes  no  forces,  even  of  the 
smallest,  wherewith  to  hold  the  bridge,  and  that  the  least 
noise,  until  the  bridge  was  held,  would  give  the  alarm. 

There  stood  at  the  bridge  head  a  great  van  for  the  removal 
of  furniture,  packed,  with  its  pole  upon  the  ground,  wait- 
ing for  the  dawn,  when  it  should  be  harnessed  and  started 
upon  its  road.  In  a  moment  they  had  drawn  it  across 
their  end  of  the  narrow  bridge  and  blocked  the  approach.  In 
the  same  moment  certain  of  their  companions  had  warned 
the  officials  of  the  town,  and  these,  especially  Sauce,  the 
Procurator,  saw  to  the  rousing  of  every  house  upon  the 
hither  side  of  the  river. 

All  this  was  done  with  such  rapidity  that  the  officials 
were  astir,  the  bridge  barricaded,  and  two  men  already 
armed,  before  the  royal  carriage  had  skidded  half-way  down 
the  hundred  yards  of  hill.  At  that  point  an  archway  running 
under  an  old  church  blocked  the  road ;  at  that  archway  the 


376  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

two  armed  men  posted  themselves,  and  just  as  the  out- 
rider of  the  fugitives  had  come  into  the  narrow  pass,  the 
challenge  was  given  which  ended  the  hopes  of  the  Mon- 
archy. For  the  two  sentries  thus  improvised  challenged, 
the  outrider  dismounted,  voluble,  the  horses  of  the  cab- 
riolet were  thrown  back  upon  their  haunches,  the  huge 
coach-and-six  behind  it  slithered  somehow  to  a  stop  upon  the 
steep  road,  and  the  Queen  suddenly  realised  that  the  crash 
and  the  disaster  had  come.  She  heard  the  threat  to  fire. 
She  looked  from  her  window,  as  the  Duchess  fumbled  for 
the  passports,  and  uttered  one  of  those  phrases  memorable 
in  history  for  their  anti-climax:  she  begged  the  gentlemen 
who  had  stopped  them  to  go  through  the  formalities  quickly, 
as  she  was  desirous  of  reaching  the  end  of  her  journey  as 
quickly  as  might  be. 

The  two  armed  men  had  increased  now  to  eight;  to  this 
little  group  was  added  a  German  soldier  or  two  wander- 
ing aimlessly  upon  leave,  uncommanded  and  perfectly 
drunk.  The  ladies  in  the  cabriolet  had  got  out  and  had 
been  thrust  into  the  inn;  but  even  when  matters  had  gone 
so  far,  that  incertitude  and  fear  of  responsibility,  which  had 
saved  the  family  thrice  already  in  their  flight,  all  but  saved 
them  again.  The  passports  seemed  regular,  and  had  it 
not  been  for  the  wild  energy  of  Drouet,  his  threats  and  his 
violence,  the  journey  would  have  proceeded,  the  van  would 
have  been  rolled  back  from  the  bridge,  the  relay  of  horses 
in  the  square  of  the  lower  town  would  have  been  har- 
nessed, Bouille's  own  son,  who  had  been  waiting  in  a  hotel 
beyond  the  river  all  day  and  was  waiting  there  now  in  the 
dark,  expectant,  would  have  accompanied  them  out  of  the 
borough.  .  .  .  With  the  dawn,  which  was  now  not  two 
hours  off,  the  vanguard  of  Bouille's  cavalry  would  have  en- 


VARENNES  377 

sured  their  safety  forever.  But  Drouet  stormed,  shouted 
perpetually  the  words  "High  treason!"  and  gained  all  that 
he  desired,  which  was  delay.  "If  there  were  any  doubt," 
said  Sauce,  "  to  wait  for  morning  would  do  no  harm.  The 
horses  needed  rest,  the  night  was  dark."  He  lifted  the 
lantern  in  his  hand  and  put  it  closely  and  curiously  into 
the  face  of  the  Queen:  :<You  must  get  down,  Madame; 
you  must  get  down."  He  would  not  endorse  the  pass- 
port until  the  morning. 

Even  during  the  few  words  of  this  conversation,  the 
crowd  had  continued  to  increase,  and  with  the  crowd  the 
armed  men.  It  occurred  to  the  King  to  command;  he  did 
it  paternally,  with  a  "Now,  then,"  and  a  "Come,  come," 
bidding  the  postilions  go  forward.  Nothing,  happened. 
He  looked  out  of  the  window  and  saw  that  the  postilions 
had  dismounted,  and  there  came  again,  now  from  a  great 
number  of  levelled  muskets,  the  threat  to  fire.  There  was  but 
one  faint  and  last  chance  against  discovery:  to  pretend 
no  more  than  an  inconvenience,  and  to  do  as  they  were  bid. 

The  family  got  down  wearily  (for  twenty-four  mortal 
hours  they  had  been  cramped  upon  that  journey),  entered 
the  house  of  Sauce  the  Procurator,  just  opposite,  and  waited 
for  the  morning.  Meanwhile  in  the  street  outside  the 
clamour  of  Ste.  Menehould  was  repeated,  the  tocsin  sounded 
and  the  drum,  and  the  men  of  the  town  armed  by  tens  and 
by  hundreds,  and  at  last  all  the  population,  children  and 
old  men  and  women,  were  crowding  the  street,  and  filling 
it  with  perpetual  noise. 

It  was  not  yet  light  when  the  Hussars,  Choiseul  and  his 
Hussars,  came  blundering  out  of  the  wood.  Mercenary 
troops  have  great  advantages.  If  the  troops  are  foreign 
the  advantages  are  greater  still ;  but  a  disadvantage  attaches 


378  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

to  such  troops,  which  is  the  need  of  interpreters.  They 
could  understand  nothing  of  what  was  going  on  around 
them,  they  could  not  understand  the  speech  that  was  made, 
urging  them  to  save  " their"  King. 

They  were  ordered  to  charge,  and  did  so,  clearing  the 
street,  and  they  formed  after  the  short  charge  in  front  of 
the  mean  house  which  held  the  royal  family.  There 
could  be  no  further  doubt  in  the  townsmen's  minds ;  it  was 
indeed  the  King. 

The  Hussars  and  the  King  and  the  Queen,  his  gaolers,  the 
Municipality,  all  were  in  a  general  agreement  that  with 
dawn  the  royal  family  should  continue  its  journey.  But 
meanwhile  the  incalculable  element,  the  populace,  swelled 
out  of  all  knowledge.  When  the  first  light  showed  in  the 
streets  far  more  than  the  population  of  Varennes  was  there. 
They  poured  in  from  the  countrysides ;  the  men  going  to  the 
fields  to  catch  the  grass  with  their  scythes  before  the  dew  was 
off  it  heard  the  news  and  came ;  those  coming  in  for  market 
to  the  lower  to\vn  heard  the  news  and  came ;  the  Men  of  the 
Forest  came.  And  the  rumour  that  Bouille  was  on  the 
march  with  his  army,  at  the  head  of  the  hired  German 
cavalry,  did  but  increase  the  crowd. 

It  was  full  day.  For  a  second  time  under  the  increas- 
ing menace  the  Hussars  were  ordered  to  charge.  They 
hesitated,  and  against  them,  now  in  rank,  were  the  armed 
men  of  the  local  National  Guard.  The  sun  had  risen. 
Goguelat  tried  to  force  his  way  forward,  trusting  that  if 
he  did  so  his  Hussars  would  follow.  But  these  looked  on 
in  a  kindly  German  way,  bewildered,  and  the  officer  of 
the  National  Guard  shot  Goguelat,  who  fell  from  his 
horse.  The  crowd,  already  morally  impassable  for  its 
determination  and  its  arms,  was  now  physically  so.  All 


VARENNES  379 

down  the  street  to  the  bridge  and  all  round,  up  the  courts 
and  alleys,  one  could  see  nothing  but  the  crowd;  and  the 
proportion  of  Militia  uniforms  among  them,  the  number  of 
bayonets  that  showed  above  their  shoulders,  increased  as  the 
hours  passed,  as  four  o'clock  struck,  and  five,  and  six. 

The  King's  green  coat  had  been  seen  a  moment  at  the 
window;  the  cheers  that  met  it  (for  they  were  cheers,  not 
groans)  were  now  swelled  by  the  voices  of  some  ten  thou- 
sand armed  men,  and  already  the  cry  was  raised  "for 
Paris."  .  .  .  Already  had  the  scouts  of  Bouille's 
Uhlans  appeared  far  off  upon  the  sky-line  of  the  eastern  hills. 

He  could  never  have  passed  the  bridge  in  time.  Noth- 
ing but  artillery  could  have  cleared  the  town.  The  gen- 
eral and  popular  decision  was  made  and  grew ;  no  discipline, 
no  individual  command  could  meet  it.  The  cry  of  "Paris" 
filled  the  air,  now  with  a  meaningless  noise,  now  with  a 
comic  rhythm,  such  as  impatient  audiences  make  in  theatres 
or  soldiers  on  the  march.  There  were  negotiations,  but 
with  every  mention  of  "Montmedy,"  the  shout  of  "Paris" 
grew  louder. 

The  couple  of  guns,  which  the  National  Guards  of  the 
town  were  allowed  by  law,  had  at  their  head,  as  was  only 
right,  a  gunner.  It  was  this  gunner  who  brought  the 
good  news  out  at  last  and  said  that  the  King  had  consented 
to  return. 

By  seven  the  whole  swarm  of  thousands,  with  the  ber- 
line  wedged  in  the  midst,  were  off  back  westward  again 
upon  the  Paris  road,  a  vast  dust  about  them,  songs,  and  — 
what  is  more  curious  —  speed,  but  a  speed  which  was  soon 
crushed  under  the  pressure  of  such  a  multitude.  As  they 
lost  the  horizons  of  Varennes,  the  last  sight  they  saw  behind 
them  was  the  main  body  of  Bouille's  German  cavalry  as 


880  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

it  came  over  and  formed  upon  the  hill  beyond  the  river, 
baffled.  By  ten,  in  a  violent  heat  of  the  sun,  the  throng  had 
crawled  to  Clermont;  the  first,  the  only  doubtful  and  the 
fatal  stage  of  the  capture  and  the  return  was  accomplished. 


What  had  happened  that  the  King's  mind  should  change  ? 
For  all  those  hours  in  Varennes  every  official  had  desired 
the  continuation  of  the  journey;  all  the  "responsibles" 
had  withstood  the  growing  anger  of  the  populace,  when 
suddenly,  Radet,  the  gunner,  had  announced  a  capitulation, 
and,  almost  as  suddenly,  within  the  half-hour  before  seven, 
after  all  those  dark  and  morning  hours  of  delay,  the  King 
had  consented  to  return. 

What  had  happened  was  this  :  Two  men  had  come  with 
authority  from  Paris,  from  the  Parliament  —  Bayou  and 
Romeuf  were  their  names;  they  had  reached  Varennes  in 
the  morning,  the  first  exultant,  the  second  reluctant;  each 
came  burdened  with  that  Authority  by  which  the  French 
live,  and  both  had  entered  the  house  of  Sauce.  The  Queen 
had  stormed,  and  had  dashed  their  written  message  of 
Authority  to  the  ground,  but  even  the  reluctant  Romeuf 
had  picked  it  up  and  laid  it  again  reverently  before  her. 
Authority  by  whicji  the  Frenrh  live  lay 


It  was  this  which  compelled  the  King.     To 
this  he  had  yielded. 

The  military  temper  of  this  people! 

The  Parliament  learnt  the  flight  of  the  King  at  about 
eight  or  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning  following  that  midnight 
adventure.  Bayou  was  commissioned  to  "pursue,  capture, 
and  report"  in  the  forenoon  of  that  day  the  21st  of  June. 


VARENNES  381 

He  started  eleven  hours  behind  the  King.  The  King, 
driven  by  Fersen,  had  passed  the  barriers  of  Paris,  as  we 
have  seen,  just  after  midnight  of  the  20th. 

It  was  close  on  noon  when  Romeuf  had  shot  like  an 
arrow  through  the  Porte  St.  Martin,  galloping  hell  and 
'leather  along  the  great  frontier  road.  Louis  was  at  Chain- 
try  then,  fifty  miles  ahead.  An  hour  after  Bayou,  Romeuf, 
who  had  been  sent  also,  followed  upon  another  trail:  he 
was  a  royalist  and  hated  the  job,  but  he  obeyed  orders;  at 
last  he  caught  the  right  scent  from  witnesses  and  rumour, 
and  was  thundering  off  with  a  heavy  heart,  but  a  soldier, 
down  the  same  way. 

Bayou  rode  and  he  rode,  a  ride  to  test  his  breeches. 
Seventy  miles,  eighty  miles,  is  a  ride  for  any  man.  Bayou, 
relaying  at  every  post  and  covering,  in  between,  his  fif- 
teen miles  an  hour  or  more,  galloped  into  Chaintry  just 
before  six  in  the  evening,  and  there  at  Chaintry  —  where 
at  midday  Louis  and  Marie  Antoinette  had  graciously 
revealed  themselves  to  old  Lagny  —  Bayou  found  a  sus- 
picious man,  one  De  Briges,  very  evidently  employed  to 
follow  and  to  aid  the  fugitives.  Bayou  dismounted,  held 
that  man  prisoner,  and  dined,  but  not  before  he  had  sent 
on,  by  his  written  Authority,  Lagny's  boy  helter-skelter 
up  the  road  to  rouse  Chalons  beyond. 

Romeuf  was  less  speedy,  but  a  fine  rider  for  all  that.  He  was 
an  hour  behind  Bayou,  he  reached  Chaintry  on  account  of 
missing  the  scent  at  starting  two  hours  behind  him, 
when  Bayou,  having  dined  and  sent  forward  that  mes- 
senger, was  already  off  in  a  carriage  to  Chalons  fol- 
lowing the  trail.  They  met  at  Chalons  —  a  town  all 
informed  and  astir  —  thence  forward,  the  two  together, 
Bayou  eager,  Romeuf  in  despair  for  his  friends  (but 


382  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

discipline  constrained  him),  drove  —  not  rode,  past  the 
bonfire  glare  and  howling  of  Ste.  Menehould,  all  night 
through  Argonne,  till  by  morning  they  came  —  with  their 
Authority  —  to  Varennes. 

And  in  this  day  and  night  of  hard -riding  Frenchmen, 
a  third  must  be  mentioned:  Mangin,  druggist  and  lawyer 
of  Varennes,  had  galloped  from  Varennes  at  dawn,  had  left 
his  horse  collapsed  at  Clermont,  had  relayed  and  relayed,  still 
riding,  urging  back  to  Paris  to  give  news  to  the  Parliament. 

He  passed  in  a  flash  the  carriage  of  Bayou,  careless  of 
it;  long  before  six  he  was  at  Ste.  Menehould,  changed  horse, 
was  off  to  Orbeval,  changed  horse,  was  off  to  Somme-Vesle, 
changed  horse,  was  off  to  Chalons,  riding  and  riding  hard, 
nearly  fifty  miles  and  not  yet  eight  o'clock.  He  ate  and 
drank  and  mounted,  re-horsed,  and  on:  what  skin!  All 
the  long  road  all  day,  gallop  and  change  and  gallop  under 
the  sun:  twelve  hours  in  the  saddle  when  he  came  to  the 
deep  Marne,  sixteen  when  he  dashed  into  Bondy.  .  .  . 
A  companion,  who  had  met  him,  rode  on  to  share  his 
triumph.  .  .  .  Mangin  shook  him  off.  .  .  .  The 
suburbs  of  Paris  .  .  .  the  barrier  —  eighteen  hours 
of  it  before  he  got  his  foot  to  ground  and  staggered 
into  the  Assembly!  Lord!  what  a  ride! 

It  was  ten  at  night;  the  hundreds  of  candles  guttered 
and  glimmered  over  a  handful  of  exhausted  men  upon 
the  benches  of  the  Parliament;  Mangin  handed  his  mes- 
sage to  the  Chair,  and  his  ride  was  done.  Good  Lord, 
what  a  ride! 


Beauharnais  was  in  the  Chair:  remarkable  for  this,  that 
his  widow  married  Napoleon. 


VARENNES  383 

Beauharnais  read  the  message:  "The  King  was  taken!" 
As  Parliaments  go  that  Parliament  was  drastic  and  imme- 
diate ;  it  came  to  its  conclusion  in  two  hours  —  a  space 
of  time  that  meant  thirty  miles  to  a    courier.     It    nomi- 
nated, somewhat  after  midnight,  three  commissioners:  Bar- 
Maubaurg  —  of  the  centre,  of  the  left  and  of 


the"  right  —  and  with  them  Damas  for  military  orders. 
Each  young,  each  growing  in  fame  —  Barnave  and  Petion 
already  famous  —  they  left  together  with  the  morning. 

It  was  Thursday,  Corpus  Christi.  Every  village  of  the 
Marne  Valley  was  garlanded  and  upon  holiday,  the  church 
doors  stood  open  to  the  humming  air  of  midsummer,  the 
peasants,  most  of  them  at  games,  some  few  in  procession  or 
coming  out  from  Mass,  upon  that  great  feast  made  every  stage 
of  the  road  alive  ;  as  the  sun  rose  to  noon,  the  population  of  the 
villages  on  either  slope  of  the  river  valley  poured  in  like  rivulets 
down  the  chalky  lanes,  swelling  the  mob  upon  the  great 
highway.  By  the  afternoon  the  throng  had  so  largely 
increased  that  the  carriage  of  the  Parliamentary  Com- 
missioners could  no  longer  go  at  the  trot,  it  was  walked, 
as  was  walked,  surrounded  by  a  larger,  dustier,  much  fiercer 
crowd,  that  other  carriage,  the  berline,  which  was  crawling 
to  meet  them  across  the  flat  miles  of  Champagne. 

The  hills  grew  higher,  the  dale  narrower,  as  their  slow 
progress  brought  them  past  Dormans,  and  gradually, 
with  the  multitude  about  them,  to  Mareuil.  The  setting 
sun  was  on  the  famous  vineyards  and  on  the  fringe  of  forest 
far  above:  they  were  anxious,  perhaps,  whether  they  would 
meet  the  returning  fugitives  while  yet  it  was  light,  and  so 
be  spared  the  risk  of  confusion  and  perhaps  disaster  in  the 
darkness. 

But  that  meeting  could  not  now  be  far  off.     Rumour 


384  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

first,  then  couriers,  going  before  the  gradual  advance  of 
the  King's  captors  announced  his  advent,  and  the  three 
Commissioners  wondered  what  they  would  see.  Reports 
had  already  moved  them,  true  details  in  the  midst  of  much 
fable,  of  invasion  and  of  fancied  massacres  and  fires  .  .  . 
the  mob  at  Chalons,  the  sleepless  night  of  consultation, 
the  irruption  of  a  violent  militia  from  Rheims,  the  ter- 
rible slow  march  on  the  Epernay  road  with  its  jeers  and 
anger  and  threats  of  death;  the  violent  jostle  at  Epernay 
itself  —  the  fear  that  the  prisoners  might  never  reach  the 
capital.  They  had  heard  composedly  of  these  things, 
with  clearer  and  clearer  detail  as  the  later  passages  of  the  long 
agony  were  given:  they  were  now  very  near  the  meeting. 

The  hot  day  had  fallen  to  its  end,  and  evening  was  come 
quite  pure  over  the  high  plateaus  that  bound  the  valley; 
it  was  darker  upon  the  water-meadows  of  the  valley  floor 
when  they  saw  before  them,  a  long  way  off,  the  dust,  and 
heard  the  noise,  when  they  came  near  and  smelt  the  incal- 
culable crowd  that  roared  round  the  carriages  of  the  King. 

The  advent  of  the  Commissioners  of  Parliament  threw 
an  abrupt  silence  over  the  French,  ever  avid  for  worship: 
these  three  dissimilar  men,  one  of  whom  alone  approached 
greatness,  were  taken  as  transubstantiate  with  the  National 
power.  In  such  an  attitude,  near  the  doors  of  the  berline, 
in  the  centre  of  the  compact  thousands  that  were  massed, 
hats  off  and  reverent  in  gaze,  between  the  hillside  and  the 
river,  Petion  read  the  Decree  of  the  Assembly. 

With  excuses  upon  their  part  and  voluble  instance  from 
the  King,  Petion  and  Barnave  managed  to  get  them- 
selves into  the  carriage,  for  the  Queen  took  the  Dauphin 
on  her  knee,  the  Princess  stood  before  her  aunt,  and  Petion 
decorously  straightened  between  the  Duchesse  de  Tourzel 


PETION 


VARENNES  385 

and  Madame  Elizabeth,  faced  Barnave,  who  sat,  more 
generously  large  between  the  King  and  Queen. 

At  last  the  Commissioners  could  watch  that  driven  group. 
Three  nights  without  sleep,  two  of  agony;  three  days,  one 
of  flight,  two  of  intolerable  heat,  insult,  violence,  and  a 
snail's-pace  progress,  had  left  them  feverish,  and  yet  —  as 
sufferers  are  when  all  is  quite  abnormal  —  interested  in  tiny 
things,  and  careless.  Their  linen  was  dirty  in  the  extreme — 
the  Queen's  grey  dress  stained,  torn,  and  roughly  mended, 
the  King's  brown  coat  a  very  dusty  brown;  but  their  faces 
were  clean  —  they  had  washed  at  Epernay  —  and  they 
were  not  unlively. 

It  got  darker  and  darker;  the  noise  of  the  crowd  out- 
side calmed  a  little,  though  from  time  to  time  a  great  rustic 
head  would  lumber  in  at  the  window  to  stare  at  royalty. 
The  Queen,  who  had  talked  rapidly  from  the  moment  she 
had  seen  her  deliverers,  Madame  Elizabeth,  who  had 
caught  and  pressed  Petion's  arm  and  clung  in  a  foolish 
ecstasy  of  terror,  kept  up  a  ceaseless  chatter  —  and  the 
King,  against  his  wont,  joined  in.  They  had  not  meant 
to  leave  the  country  —  far  from  it.  "  No  "  (from  the  King) ; 
"I  said  so  positively.  Did  I  not?"  (appealing  to  his  wife). 
"We  are  really  anxious  about  the  three  Guardsmen. 
We  went  to  Mass  at  Chalons  this  morning  —  but  it  was 
constitutional,  I  assure  you."  Only  once  did  the  reserve 
of  an  earlier  (and  a  later)  time  appear  upon  the  Queen; 
it  was  when  Barnave  hinted  that  one  of  the  men  on  the  box 
was  Swedish,  when  Petion  added  that  the  man  who  had 
driven  the  coach  from  the  Tuileries  was  a  Swede  —  called  ? 
.  .  T  he  pretended  to  hesitate  about  the  name :  the  Queen  had 
said,  "  I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  learning  hackney  coachmen's 
names,"  and,  after  saying  it,  was,  for  perhaps  the  first  time 


386  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

in  two  hours,  silent.  Then  she  forgave  them  —  forgave 
Barnave  at  least  —  and  talked  on  in  lower  tones.  She  was 
getting  to  like  Barnave.  The  little  boy,  playing  with  the 
buttons  on  Barnave's  coat,  made  out  the  letters  on  them. 
"It  says  'we  will  live  free  or  die."  He  was  proud  to  read 
such  small  letters  so  well.  He  repeated  the  phrase,  but  no 
one  of  his  elders  answered  him. 

Petion,  upon  the  back  seat,  felt  an  arm  upon  his  in  the 
darkness.  He  remembered  the  same  arm  as  it  held  him 
close  when  he  had  met  the  berline  two  hours  before.  He 
saw  under  the  moonlight  the  white  and  small  hand  of 
Madame  Elizabeth  lying  near  his,  and  it  occurred  to  him1 
that  this  very  pious,  very  narrow,  very  distant  girl  either 
suddenly  loved  him  or  feigned  love  in  order  to  corrupt  his 
republican  ardour  —  for  he  was  already  republican. 

It  is  objected  with  indignation  that  women  of  birth  do 
not  so  demean  themselves  with  country  lawyers.  The  indig- 
nation is  fatuous,  but  the  objection  is  well  founded.  Women 
of  birth  have  indeed  so  profound  a  repugnance  for  his  class 
that  even  the  bait  of  a  great  fortune,  though  it  often  com- 
pels them  to  a  marriage,  will  hardly  overcome  the  loathing, 
and  if  they  must  yield  to  passion  it  is  more  commonly  to 
favour  a  groom  than  a  solicitor.  But  this  woman  had  no  such 
frailties.  She  was  saintly,  foolish,  well  bred  and  bewildered. 
She  may  have  made  herself  as  pleasant  a  companion  as  it 
was  in  her  power  to  be,  for  by  such  easy  arts  the  rich,  when 
they  fall,  will  always  try  to  appease  their  conquerors.  More 
than  that  she  certainly  did  not  do.  The  Queen  knew  better 
in  what  way  to  command  her  captors;  she  fixed  upon  Bar- 
^ave^and  within  the  first  day  of  their  companionship  she 
had  drawn  him  from  that  other  camp  into  hers. 

J  Jle  has  recorded  this  sensation  at  length  in  print 


VARENNES  387 

They  slept  at  Dormans  —  so  much  as  they  could  sleep 
with  the  mob  howling  all  night  in  the  square  outside.  Next 
day,  Friday,  the  third  of  that  return,  the  fourth  of  that 
martyrdom,  they  continued  the  Paris  road.  The  day  was 
yet  hotter  than  the  yesterday  had  been,  and  the  violent  and 
the  out-o '-works  from  Paris  began  to  join  the  crowd.  At 
evening  the  tower  of  Meaux  stood  up  before  them  against 
the  red  sky. 

There,  at  Meaux,  Marie  Antoinette  took  a  turn  with 
Barnave;  long,  quiet  looks,  a  familiar  and  continued  con- 
versation, a  stroll  in  the  garden  alone  and  decent  confi- 
dences during  the  night,  finally  captured  Barnave.  He  was, 
from  the  moment  of  their  return  to  Paris,  the  Queen's. 

He  suffered  no  conversion  in  opinion,  he  did  not  forget 
his  early  political  principle,  he  simply  became  indifferent  to 
it  and  a  servant  of  something  that  lived  and  suffered  and 
exercised  also  upon  some  few  —  and  he  was  one  —  a  charm, 
perhaps  of  voice,  perhaps  of  carriage,  but,  at  any  rate, 
of  sex. 

He  worked  henceforward  absolutely  for  Marie  Antoinette. 
He  achieved  so  little  that  his  name  will  hardly  appear  again 
in  this  record  of  her  fall,  but  his  name  should  be  retained  as 
a  proof  of  what  she  still  was  to  men. 

He  has  long  been  accused  of  treason.  He  would  have 
told  you  that  he  betrayed  a  formula,  a  phrase,  to  be  the 
more  loyal  to  a  soul  and  body  which  he  had  come,  as  by  a 
revelation,  to  understand.  But  Barnave  was  wrong:  not  to 
bodies  or  things,  but  to  ideas,  are  men  rightly  subject: 
religion  resides  in  dogma :  loyalty  must  express  itself  in  a 
creed,  and  the  Word  is  God.  These  reasonings  against 
reason,  these  preferences  of  the  thing  to  the  idea,  are  dan- 
gerous to  honour. 


388  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Henceforward  Barnave  was  near  her  always :  advised  her 
secretly,  wrote  to  dictation  from  her  lips :  ran  risk  and  peril, 
and  at  last  died  by  the  same  hands  which  had  killed  her  also 
upon  the  scaffold. 

This  bishop's  Palace  at  Meaux,  the  halls  that  Bossuet  had 
knowrn,  was  their  last  resting-place.  The  sun  was  well  up, 
it  was  already  warm  when  they  left  the  town  for  the  slow 
stretch  of  thirteen  hours  to  Paris. 

The  weather  would  not  change.  The  same  intense  and 
blinding  heat  pursued  and  tortured  them;  but  it  was  now 
less  tolerable  than  ever,  both  from  the  length  to  which  the 
strain  had  been  spun  out,  and  from  the  increasing  crowds 
which  lined  the  old  paved  road  in  a  wider  and  wider  margin 
as  they  neared  the  capital.  The  flat  hedgeless  fields  seemed 
covered  with  men  —  as  the  prisoners  saw  it  through  their 
low  windows  —  to  the  horizon.  The  murmur  beyond  had 
swelled  into  a  sort  of  permanent  roar,  which  mixed  with  the 
songs  and  cries  of  the  few  hundred  that  still  kept  pace  with 
the  carriages,  and  now  that  they  had  left  the  valley  of  the 
Marne  and  entered  the  dry  plain  that  bounds  Paris  to  the 
north,  the  drought  and  the  dust  were  past  bearing.  The 
approach  of  evening  afforded  them  no  relief.  At  the  gate 
of  the  city,  where  at  least  they  might  expect  the  contrast  of 
the  familiar  streets  and  the  approach  to  repose,  they  were 
disappointed.  The  driver  had  orders  to  skirt  the  barrier 
round  to  the  western  side.  So  for  some  two  hours  more  this 
calvary  dragged  on:  the  ragged  marchers  themselves  were 
exhausted,  many  clung  to  the  sides  of  the  coach.  Some 
few  had  climbed  upon  its  roof  and  jeered  and  threat- 
ened those  three  Guards,  who  sat  silent  in  their  yellow 
liveries  not  replying,  awaiting  their  chance  of  escape  at  the 
end  of  this  endless  journey. 


BARNAVE 


VARENNES  389 

When  the  last  slope  into  the  town  was  climbed,  the 
travellers,  as  they  crossed  the  flat  summit  where  is  now  the 
Triumphal  Arch  of  Napoleon,  could  see  at  last  before  them, 
beyond  lines  of  trees  and  about  the  innumerable  heads,  the 
windows  of  their  palace  sending  back  the  evening  light  in  a 
blaze,  and  to  the  left  that  huge  oblong  roof  of  the  riding- 
school  where  sat  the  Parliament. 

Meanwhile,  as  the  berline  passed  the  barrier  the  bellowing 
and  the  songs,  the  tramping  and  the  press  of  moving  poverty, 
white  with  dust  and  parched  to  drunkenness,  ceased  sud- 
denly. It  was  like  a  stream  of  anarchy  breaking  against 
that  curious  homogeneity  of  attitude  and  clear  purpose 
which  marked  the  capital  upon  every  principal  day  of  the 
Revolution  and  cut  it  off  sharply  from  the  provinces  and 
even  the  suburbs  around. 

This  new  and  purely  Parisian  crowd  which  they  now 
entered,  silent,  dark-coated  and  with  covered  heads  — 
largely  of  the  middle  class  —  thronged  all  the  length  of 
the  Champs  Elysees  and  packed  the  Place  de  la  Concorde. 
The  myriad  fixed  eyes  of  it  saw  the  convoy  show  black 
against  the  western  light  upon  the  summit  of  the  hill; 
they  watched  it  creeping  down  the  avenue  between  the 
double  line  of  soldiery,  each  section  of  which,  as  the  King 
passed,  reversed  arms  as  at  a  funeral  soldiers  reverse  arms. 

There  was  no  sound.  The  spontaneous  discipline  which 
makes  Paris  a  sort  of  single  thing,  living  and  full  of  will,  so 
controlled  this  vast  assemblage  that  neither  a  cry  was  raised 
nor  a  hat  lifted.  The  note  of  the  whole  was  silence. 

During  the  full  half-hour  of  that  long  approach  down  the 
hill  this  silence  endured;  the  carriage  was  at  the  gates  of 
the  Tuileries  Gardens,  had  entered  them.  Within  the  rid- 
ing-school, the  manege  where  sat  the  Parliament,  to 


390  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

benches  that  rapidly  emptied  as  the  curiosity  of  the 
Deputies  drew  them  away,  Fursy  was  droning  out  a 
report  upon  fortified  places  of  the  first,  the  second,  and  the 
third  class.  Outside,  the  crowd  still  denser  but  silent  as 
ever,  the  berline  passed  and  the  sections  saluted  —  a 
reversed  salute,  on  either  side;  it  was  within  a  furlong  of  its 
goal  when,  from  a  platform  outside  the  Parliament  building, 
a  young  member  of  the  Royalist  right  drawing  himself  well 
up  that  he  might  be  observed,  lifted  his  hat  and  very  gravely 
and  pronouncedly  made  obeisance  to  the  Crown. 

The  spell  was  broken.  There  was  a  scuffle,  a  hubbub, 
a  general  war;  the  slowly  moving  crowd  crested  into  weapons 
as  a  deep  swell  at  sea  will  crest  into  foam.  The  postilions 
of  the  berline  urged  their  horses;  a  hundred  yards  to  go, 
and  the  hedge  of  soldiery  was  forced  and  the  mob  was 
upon  the  carriage.  The  three  Guardsmen  sat  still  un- 
touched, with  death  upon  them ;  but  the  horses  floundered 
through  the  deafening  cries  and  strugglers,  trampling  and 
rearing;  the  great  vehicle  was  hauled  and  piloted  in;  the 
wrought-iron  gates  clanged  behind  it.  It  was  past  seven 
and  the  journey  was  ended. 

A  week  had  gone.  On  Monday  night  they  had  watched 
with  Fersen;  all  Tuesday  fled;  on  Wednesday  night  and 
morning  suffered  at  Varennes,  and  in  the  slow  drag-back  to 
Chalons ;  on  Thursday  at  Epernay  met  the  Commissioners, 
all  Friday  suffered  their  captivity  till  Meaux  was  reached— 
and  now,  as  the  light  of  Saturday  began  to  fall,  the  hunting 
was  over. 


A 


XV 
THE  WAR 

FROM   SATURDAY,    JUNE   25,    1791,   TO    HALF-PAST   EIGHT   ON   THE 
EVENING  OF  JUNE  20,  1792 

*  MAN,  callous  or  wearied  by  study,  might  still  dis- 
cover in  the  pursuit  of  History  one  last  delight: 
the  presence  in  all  its  record  of  a  superhuman  irony. 

In  Padua,  where  the  Polignacs  had  taken  refuge  with 
their  loot,  the  Emperor  Leopold,  returning  from  Tuscany, 
was  at  that  moment  their  host  and  guest.  With  them  and 
their  circle  he  discussed  the  enormities  of  the  French  and  the 
approaching  escape  of  his  sister  and  the  King;  for  he  was 
cognisant  of  that  plan;  he  knew  that  since  the  death  of 
Mirabeau  the  idea  of  relying  upon  French  arms  against  the 
Parliament  had  been  abandoned,  and  that  an  invasion  by 
foreign  allies jwas  the  scheme  of  the  Court. 

Leopold  certainly  designed,  when  the  first  part  of  that 
scheme  was  accomplished  and  the  King  was  in  safety  on 
the  frontier,  to  strengthen  the  royal  armies  with  his  own 
and  to  advance  upon  the  Revolution.  Varennes,  I  repeat, 
was  everything.  The  King  once  free  of  Paris,  and  the 
armies  would  have  been  over  the  frontier.  The  King  a 
captive  in  Paris,  and  compelled  to  pose  as  the  acting  and 
national  Executive,  war  was  another  matter.  The  French 
nation  could  act  as  one  force. 

So  insecure  and  dilatory  were  the  communications  of  the 
-  time  that  for  a  whole  fortnight  nothing  but  guesses  reached 

391 


392  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Padua.  Upon  the  second  of  July  these  guesses  urged  Leo- 
pold to  write;  but  at  last,  upon  the  5th,  a  fortnight  after 
the  flight,  came  definite  and  official  news.  The  King  had 
succeeded.  He  was  safe  in  Metz  with  the  army  of  Bouille. 
The  Queen  was  safe  beyond  the  frontier  in  Luxembourg. 

Leopold  sat  down  and  wrote  at  once  a  sort  of  psean,  a 
cry  of  triumph  and  of  immediate  action,  and  offered  his 
treasury,  his  army,  his  everything  to  his  sister  for  the  imme- 
diate march  against  the  French  people. 

She,  in  Paris,  watched  and  guarded  every  way,  had  found 
it  possible  to  write  to  Fersen  two  notes  which,  when  he 
destroyed  these  many  monuments  of  her  love  for  him,  he 
copied  with  his  own  hand.  Her  main  preoccupation  is  that 
he  should  not  return  by  stealth.  She  tells  him  he  is  dis- 
covered, and  that  his  part  in  the  flight  is  known;  she  begs 
him  to  keep  safe.  But  it  is  probable  or  certain  from  one 
phrase  in  these  notes  that  in  the  bitter  anger  of  the  moment 
she  desired  to  be  rescued  by  a  chivalry  under  arms,  and 
would  appeal  to  war. 

That  determination  in  turn  she  abandoned,  and  from  the 
month  of  August  onwards  until  nine  months  later,  the  armed 
struggle  began,  one  plan,  lucid,  and  especially  lucid  when  one 
considers  that  it  proceeded  from  so  imperfect  a  judgment  as 
hers,  possessed  her  and  was  continually  expressed:  she 
demanded  a  congress  backed  by  arms,  the  uiiinediatejhreat 
of  a  vast  but  silent  force,  and  no  wordjvf  hmtilitir"  Never- 
theless and  largely,  as  we  shall  see,  -through  her,  war  came. 
It  came  with  the  spring  and  these  few  months  after  Varennes 
are  but  the  lull  before  the  noise  of  the  first  guns. 

I  would  here  admit  into  the  text  of  this  book  one  of  those 
discussions  which,  in  History  of  a  living  sort,  should  but 
rarely  be  admitted,  and  belong  rather  to  an  appendix. 


THE  WAR  393 

I  admit  it  because  a  conclusion  upon  it  is  vital  to  any  com- 
prehension of  the  Queen  and  of  the  European  position  which 
ended  in  the  struggle  between  France  and  Europe. 

No  historical  quarrel  has  been  more  warmly  debated  than 
this.  Did  the  old  society,  notably  the  Germanics,  and  at 
last  all  the  privileged  of  Euroj^down  to  the  very  merchants 
of  tKe  city  of  London,  attack  the  Revolution  to  destroy  it  ? 
Or  did  theRevolution  break  out  in  a  flame  against  them, 
and  compel  them  to  the  action  they  took  and  to  the  genera- 
tion of  war  which  ended  in  Waterloo  ? 

In  the  current  negation  of  morals  the  question  has  been 
thought  by  many  to  lack  reality.  Yet  such  is  the  nature 
of  man  that  if  he  cannot  give  a  human  answer  upon  the 
matter  of  right  and  wrong,  and  a  decision  upon  his  motive, 
all  his  action  turns  to  dust,  and  he  can  neither  approve 
nor  disapprove  any  human  act.  Now  when  man  can 
neither  approve  nor  disapprove,  things  cease  to  be,  so  far  as 
his  intelligence  is  concerned;  and  without  morals  even  his 
senses  are  dead.  Therefore  is  it,  and  has  it  always  been,  of 
supreme  importance  to  every  great  conflict  of  History  that  the 
one  side  or  other  should  justify  itself  in  motive.  And  there- 
fore has  this  discussion  raged  around  the  origins  of  the 
Great  War, 

There  is  one  sense  in  which  the  debate  can  never  be 
resolved.  It  can  be  argued  for  ever  as  a  metaphysical 
proposition;  just  as  a  man  may  argue  whether  a  spherical 
surface  is  concave  or  convex,  and  fall  at  last  into  mere 
legomachy,  so  it  may  be  eternally  debated  as  to  which  of  the 
two  combatants  was  legitimately  defending  his  existence. 
It  is  evident  that  both  were  in  this  position. 

Again,  there  is  a  fruitless  and  eternal  debate  opened  if  we 
are  to  consider  separately  every  chief  personality  concerned,. 


394  '  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Did  Brissot  really  want  war  ?  Did  Danton  want  it  ?  Did 
the  Emperor  want  it  ?  Did  Berliruaiant  it  ?  Did  .Spain  ? 
Did  the  ^King.  Louis  ?  I^id  Dumouriez  ?  The  varying 
ignorance  of  each  character  named,  the  varying  intensity 
of  the  emotions  and  necessities  of  each,  the  divergence  of 
particular  objects  in  each  individual  case  make  such  a 
synthesis  impossible.  But  if  one  looks  at  the  field  in  general 
and  considers  the  common  action  of  men  between  the 
return  from  Varennes  and  that  April  day  when  Louis  was 
compelled  to  read  out  the  Declaration  of  War  before  the 
French  Parliament,  a  true  picture,  I  think,  arises  in  the  mind, 
which  —  when,  if  ever,  the  Revolution  ceases  to  incline  to 
judgment  —  will  be  the  final  judgment  of  History.  It  is  as 
follows : —  X 

/All  desired  war:  all  feared  $.  All  attempted  to  postpone 
it.  But,  as  all  energy  of  its  nature  polarises,  these  energetic 
hatreds  and  fears  gathered  round  two  centres.  The  one 
in  France  had  for  its  heart  the  young  men  from  the  south 
and  all  their  group,  soon  to  be  called  the  "  Girondins,"  who, 
when  the  new  Parliament  gathered  at  the  close  of  the 
summer  of  Varennes,  rapidly  came  to  lead  it.  These  men, 
Gallic  in  temper,  more  and  more  desired  to  bring  to  the 
issue  of  arms  sooner  rather  than  later  what  they  thought 
must  end  —  could  not  but  end  —  in  war.  Round  this  clear 
opinion,  by  the  time  winter  had  come,  what  was  living  and 
active  in  France  increasingly  gathered.  It  is  a  phenomenon 
repeated  a  hundred  times  in  the  history  of  the  French  peo- 
ple. We  shall  certainly  see  an  example  of  it  in  our  own 
generation.  The  hand  once  upon  the  hilt  of  the  sword 
draws  it. 

Over  against  this  current  of  opinion  the  Emperor  (Marie 
Antoinette's  brother),  the  King   of   Prussia,  the    English 


THE  WAR  395 

Oligarchy.  The  Spanish  Bourbons  also  tended  to  war; 
their  decision  was  not  due  to  an  increase  of  determination 
— they  were  determined  on  the  main  question  all  along — 
but  to  the  gradual  settlement  of  details  long  in  negotiation 
between  them.  These  details  settled,  and  the  mutual  suspi- 
cions and  jealousies  of  the  Allies  sufficiently  though  partially 
appeased,  the  privileged  bodies  of  Europe  certainly  marched 
against  France,  and  to  the  Girondin  crusade  was  opposed 
something  which  was  intended  not  to  be  resistance  but  rather 
a  rapid  and  successful  act  of  police.  The  thing  had  got  to 
end,  and,  though  the  Powers  only  crossed  the  frontier  in  the 
succeeding  summer,  all  the  Courts  of  Europe  and  all  the 
privileged  bodies  of  the  old  Society  were  contented  and  glad 
that  the  fight  was  on.  Nor  were  any  more  contented  than  the 
governing  class  in  England,  who  had  helped  to  engineer 
the  campaign  and  who  could  not  but  reap  the  fruit 
of  it,  though  it  was  profoundly  to  their  interest  not  to 
bring  into  the  field  the  insufficient  armed  forces  at  their 
command. 

In  the  appreciation  of  this  situation  an  element  must  be 
remembered  without  which  the  modern  student  goes  all 
astray.  The  Allies  were  bound  to  win.  We  to-day,  looking 
back  upon  those  amazing  twenty  years,  forget  that  truth. 
Valmy,  though  still  almost  inexplicable,  has  happened, 
and  we  take  it  for  granted.  The  long  straggling  regiments 
of  Napoleon,  the  butchers'  boys  turned  generals,  the  vul- 
garian dukes  and  marshals,  the  volunteer  gunners  and  the 
rest  of  it,  won;  and  their  victory  is  now  part  of  the  European 
mind.  In  that  winter  before  the  war  broke  out,  as  '91 
turned  into  '92,  it  was  not  so. 

The  elements  obvious  to  every  thinking  man,  especially 
to  the  cold  and  therefore  profoundly  insufficient  judgment 


S96  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  alien  observers  in  Paris  itself  (of  such  coxcombs  as 
Gouverneur  Morris,  for  instance),  were  elements  which 
made  the  final  and  rapid  defeat  of  the  Revolution  certain, 
and  gave  that  approaching  defeat  all  the  qualities  of 
what  I  have  called  it,  an  act  of  police.  The  Allies 
might  be  jealous  and  suspicious  one  of  the  other, 
but  there  can  be  no  doubt  once  an  accord  was  come 
to  —  and  it  was  reached  in  the  early  months  of  '92 — 
that  against  the  anarchy  into  which  the  French 
people  had  fallen,  and  the  hopeless  indiscipline  of  their 
swollen  armies,  the  operations  of  the  invaders  would  soon 
become  but  a  series  of  executions,  and  a  summary  and 
severe  suppression  of  armed  mobs.  The  enthusiasm  of  the 
Girondins,  and  soon  of  all  France,  was  the  enthusiasm  of 
rhetoricians  and  that  self -doubting  expectation  of  the  impos- 
sible which  is  proper  to  inebriate  moods.  Nor  was  there  one 
commander  of  experience  west  of  the  Rhine  who  anticipated 
victory  for  the  French,  nor  one  commander  east  of  the  Rhine 
who  dreaded  the  failure  of  the  Kings.  It  was  mere  sound — 
as  poetry  and  music  are  mere  sound  —  that  urged  the  French 
to  war.  And  those  who  in  theory  combated  the  policy  of 
war,  of  whom  Robespierre  wras  the  most  remarkable,  those 
who,  from  their  concrete  experience,  desired  to  fend  it  off 
(with  the  army  in  such  a  state!  with  the  military  temper 
of  the  people  so  hopelessly  wild!)  that  is,  you  may  say, 
every  general  officer  —  foresaw  at  the  best  some  sort  of 
compromise  whereby  the  Revolution  would  end,  after  some 
few  battles  lost,  in  some  sort  of  a  Limited  Monarchy. 
It  was  the  appetite  for  a  Limited  Monarchy  which  made 
so  many  acquiesce  in  such  a  campaign  in  spite  of  the  cer- 
tainty of  defeat.  It  was  the  fear  that  the  great  ideal  of  the 
Revolution  miht  tail  off  intaLimitH  fonRrch  that 


THE  WAR  397 

made  the  most  ardent  democrats  oppose  the  policy  of  what 
could  not  but  be  a  disastrous  war. 

Meanwhile,  during  the  earlier  months  of  this  develop- 
ment, the  French  nobles  who  had  crossed  the  frontier 
(the  fimigresL  and  notably  the  brothers  of  the  King,  were 
an  element  of  peril  to  either  side,  lest,  a  small  and  irresponsible 
body,  they  should  provoke  hostilities  before  either  side 
demanded  them.  The  Emigres  were  active  because  they 
had  nothing  to  lose,  and  careless  of  this  moment  because 
for  them  negotiation  was  unnecessary.  To  restrain  this 
activity  was  the  chief  anxiety  of  the  great  interests  which 
were  slowly  coalescing  into  that  invincible  instrument  of 
war  whose  mission  it  was  to  restore  order  under  the  King 
of  Prussia  and  the  Duke  of  Brunswick.  As  the  months 
proceed,  as  the  coalition  forms,  this  disturbing  element  is  of 
less  and  less  importance.  In  the  early  summer  of  '92,  when 
war  is  once  declared,  the  Emigres  fall  into  line  with  the 
rest  of  the  Allies ;  and  when  the  invading  army  crosses  the 
frontier,  the  Emigres  cross  with  it  in  the  natural  course  of 
things  and  merge  in  the  general  flood. 


Such  was  the  general  development  of  the  European  situa- 
tion between  the  month  of  July,  1791,  and  the  month  of 
April,  1792. 

What,  during  that  period,  was  the  particular  disposition  of 
the  Queen  ? 

She  was  very  active.  She  had  determined  upon  a  lucid 
plan,  and  of  all  the  brains  that  were  thinking  out  how  and 
when,  if  ever,  the  struggle  should  come,  hers  was  perhaps 
the  most  tenacious  of  its  purpose. 

We  have  a  dozen  letters  of  hers  between  the  return  from 


398  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Varennes  and  the  end  of  the  year.  One  of  great  length, 
written  to  her  brother  in  September,  is  accompanied  by  a 
memorandum  and  exactly  details  her  plan.  With  the 
exception  of  two  which  were  written,  as  a  blind,  for  publica- 
tion, and  which  in  a  private  note  she  ridicules  and  disowns, 

^*     with  her  thesis.     She  pro- 


poses that  the  International  Congress  should  be  called.  In 
her  later  letters  she  begs  that  it  maybe  called  near  the  frontier, 
as  for  instance,  at  Cologne.  Before  it  is  summoned,  and 
during  its  session,  there  must  be  gathered  an  overwhelming 
military  force  ready  to  invade  at  once.  But  not  a  syllable 
must  be  breathed  that  could  be  taken  as  menace.  In  this 
plan  Marie  Antoinette  was  considering  the  personal  safety 
of  her  husband  and  her  child  ;  and  the  whole  theory  of  the 
action  she  advised  pivoted  upon  a  certain  conception  of 
the  French  people  which>was  now  so  fixed  in  her  mind  that 
nothing  could  dissolve  it  ^her  theory  was  that  the  French  were 
not  a  military  people;  that  they  spent  energy  in  words,  and 
that  before  a  plain  evidence  of  force  they  would  always  give 
wayj  she  carried  that  theory  of  hers,  little  as  it  later  accorded 
with  the  brute  facts  of  actual  war,  unmodified  to  the  scaffold. 
if  I  have  repeatedly  insisted  in  this  book  upon  the  inability 
(lof  Marie  Antoinette  to  perceive  the  French  mind.  As  a 
young  woman  her  misconception  of  her  husband's  people 

1<  dealt  with  no  more  than  personalities,  ladies'  maids,  duch- 
I  esses,  and  the  rest.     When  Gaul  moved,  and  when  she 
'  began  her  attempt  at  power  in  1787,  along  through  the 
communal  millioned  action  of  the  Revolution,  this  miscon- 
ception became   a  strong   creed,  a  vision  as  it  wrere.     She 
saw  the  French  people  intensely  active,  cruel,  cowardly, 
and  unstable  :  much  in  them  of  the  cat  and  the  fox,  nothing 
of  the  eagle.     She  perceived  their  great  mobs  and    their 


THE  WAR  399 

sudden  united  actions  — but  these  phenomena  were  to  her 
sporadic;  she  saw  them  —  she  did  not  reason  upon  them,  nor 
argue  from  them  some  peculiar  regimental  talent  in  the 
populace;  and  if  you  had  told  her  that  these  appearances  of 
marching  thousands  were  due  to  a  power  of  organisation 
from  below  —  a  national  aptitude  for  the  machinery  neces- 
sary to  arms  and  to  diplomacy  —  the  words  would  have 
seemed  to  her  simply  meaningless.  She  could  not  so  much 
as  conceive  humanity  to  be  capable  of  organisation  save  by 
the  direct  action  of  a  few  placed  above  it. 

.Of  military  Qualities  she  understood  nothing; — She  con- 
fused order,  silence,  and  similarity  of  buttons  with  discipline. 
She  had  no  conception  of  ferocity  as  the  raw  material  of 
valour.  Safe  out  of  Paris  she  would  without  a  moment's 
hesitation  have  ordered  the  invasion,  and  she  would  have 
expected  its  successful  issue  in  less  than  six  weeks.  Even  in 
Paris  she  would  have  bargained  to  conquer  with  a  "whiff 
of  grape-shot"  or  some  such  rubbish;  but  in  Paris,  without 
one  regiment  to  hand  and  without  jggular  artillery,  she 
felt  that  the  very  bodies  of  Eer  family  were  injeril  from 
"monsters  and  from  tigers"  —  the  words  are  her  own :  hence 
only  did  she  hesitate  and  o^injjul^an  armed  congress  rather 
thanan  invasion.  To  that  armed  congress  and  its  menace 
she  had  no  doubt  at  all  that  the  French  would  yield. 

A  metaphor  will  explain  the  situation  clearly.  A  human 
being,  caught  by  some  fierce  animal  but  not  yet  mauled, 
appeals  in  a  whisper  to  a  comrade  near  by  to  load,  and,  if 
possible,  by  some  demonstration  of  human  force  or  of  will 
to  make  the  wild  best  loose  its  hold;  he  begs  that  comrade 
to  do  nothing  merely  provocative  lest  the  animal  should  rend 
him  upon  whom  it  has  pounced :  but,  of  course,  that  comrade 
is  to  fire  at  the  first  active  gesture  of  attack  the  brute  may 


400  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

deliver.  Of  the  ultimate  victory  of  his  armed  comrade 
the  man  in  peril  feels  there  can  be  no  doubt  at  all ;  he  only 
advises  a  particular  caution  on  account  of  his  own  situation 
and  impotence. 

Moreover,  she  was  convinced,  and  says  it  in  so  many 
vords,  that  the  French  would  give  way  at  once  before  the 
>resence  of  a  great  and  silent  but  determined  force  upon 
heir  frontier. 

So  clear  is  the  plan  in  her  mind  that  she  is  bitterly 
impatient  of  the  necessary  caution  and  delay  of  diplomacy, 
and  of  the  long  process  of  negotiation  whereby  Berlin  is 
brought  into  the  agreement,  the  tergiversations  of  Madrid 
are  discounted  and  the  exact  balance  between  desire  for 
war  and  powrer  to  wage  it  are  sounded.  JHere  and  there 
the  peevishness  of  her  early  womanhoodappears  in  the 
complaints  she  makes,  almost  as  though  she  had  been  aban- 
doned by  her  brother  and  his  armies/7 

At  last,  in  February,  1792,  this~7ong  correspondence  is 
ended.  The  French  nation  has,  upon  the  whole,  accepted,  its 
young  rhetoricians  enthusiastically  acclaimed  the  approach 
of  war.  She,  true  to  her  plan,  proposes  that  her  brother  shall 
meet  this  growing  enthusiasm  by  positive  demands,  defini- 
tively formulated,  dealing  with  the  internal  affairs  of  the 
French  people,  proceeding  from  Vienna  and  demanding  in- 
stant reply.  We  now  know  that  she  herself  drafted  these 
demands,  and  on  the  16th  of  February  Mercy  writes  to  tell 
her  that  the  Emperor  will  order  the  French  Parliament  to 
maintain  French  Monarchy,  in  its  full  rights  and  liberty,  to 
withdraw  the  French  armies  from  the  frontier,  to  respect  the 
imperial  rights  of  the  Alsatian  feudatories ;  and  that  he  will 
at  once  back  up  this  ultimatum  with  an  additional  force, 
beyond  that  already  gathering,  of  40,000  men.  She  acknowl- 


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^ 


FACSIMILE  OF  FIRST  PAGE  OF  MARIE  ANTOINETTE'S  LETTER 

Written  on  September  3,  1791,  to  the  Emperor,  her  brother,  proposing 
armed  intervention 


THE    WAR  401 

edges  the  plan  and  confirms  it.  A  fortnight  later,  upon  the 
1st  of  March,  Mercy  can  give  her  the  last  great  news: 
Prussia  has  formally  consented  to  move,  though  demanding, 
of  course,  from  the  French  Monarchy  after  its  victory, 
compensation  for  the  cost  of  the  campaign  —  which  will 
surely  be  willingly  accorded. 

It  was  on  the  1st  of  March,  I  say,  that  this  final  news  was 
written,  when,  as  so  continually  chances  throughout 
Marie  Antoinette's  life,  a  special  fate  appears  and  intervenes. 

On  the  1st  of  March  the  King  of  Prussia  has  agreed 
to  march  with  Leopold,  and  all  is  ready  for  that  armed 
demonstration  which  would,  as  she  was  convinced,  calm  this 
great  storm  about  her.  On  that  same  day,  the  1st  of 
March,  Leopold  lay  dead.  Doctors  assure  us  that  he  was 
not  poisoned. 

Two  things  followed  upon  that  death:  first,  tbe  faejf  her 
nephew,  a  sickly  boy  of  twenty-four,  now  held  in  Vienna 
all  the  power  that  in  those  days  accompanied  the  Crown, 
and  he  in  his  weakness  was  now  the  master  of  the  armies 
his  father  haoT  summoned. 

Secondly,  there  must  be  a  1p"g  ^play  fnrjVip  hnsin^g  anrl 

the  trapping  olhis  electip"  Qr>rl  his  ^rnY^F™ 

Her  plan  meanwhiJ£jia4"-feul£d.  It  was  to  be  not  a 
silent  threat  of  arms,  but  war.  The  French  temper 
had  taken  Leopold's  command  as  a  challenge.  The  ulti- 
matum she  had  suggested  or  drafted  was  met  by  a  total 
change  in  the  Executive  of  France.  Dumouriez  was 
made  the  chief  man  in  the  new  Ministry  and  was 
personally  in  charge  of  Foreign  Affairs.  The  guns  were 
certainly  ready.  For  ten  days  after  Dumouriez'  nomination 
she  drew  from  him  his  designs ;  and  on  the  tenth  day  wrote 
secretly  to  Mercy  in  cipher  betraying  his  plan  of  campaign 


402  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

upon  the  Meuse.  Three  days  later  the  last  of  her  friends 
who  could  command  an  army,  the  King  of  Sweden,  stabbed 
a  fortnight  earlier,  died;  and  on  the  20th  of  April  her  hus- 
band, "the  Head  of  the  French  Executive,"  read  out  in  a 
firm  voice  a  declaration  of  war  against  her  nephew,  "the 
King  of  Hungary"  -  for  he  was  not  yet  crowned  Emperor. 
Having  so  read  it  in  a  firm  voice  he  went  back  home,  and 
Marie  Antoinette  and  he  must  now  bethink  themselves 
how  the  madness  of  the  people,  when  the  invasion  should 
begin,  might  be  fended  off  --  at  least  from  their  own  persons 
and  from  their  heir,  until  their  saviours  should  show  the  white 
Austrian  uniforms  in  Paris  and  march  the  grotesque  Prussian 
march  within  sight  and  hearing  of  the  Tuileries.  On  the 
30th  of  the  month  she  advised  Mercy  that  the  first  proclama- 
tion of  the  invaders  had  best  be  mild. 


Such  had  been  the  plan  of  the  Queen,  and  such  its  for- 
tune; and  by  such  a  fate  had  she  been  shadowed.  For  the 
sake  of  clarity  I  have  omitted  during  this  recital  all  save 
her  negotiation.  I  will  briefly  return  to  the  drift  of  the 
Revolutionary  progress  around  her,  and  show  how  this  also 
led  up  to  that  fatal  conclusion,  from  the  failure  of  the  flight 
to  Varennes  at  the  end  of  June,  1791,  to  the  declaration 
of  war  in  the  following  April. 


When  spirits  are  at  high  tension  and  in  full  vision,  as  it 
were,  often  a  shock  brings  back  the  old,  sober,  and  incomplete 
experience  of  living.  Such  a  shock  the  flight  to  Varennes 
had  afforded.  While  the  royal  family  were  yet  absent 
there  had  been  talk  against  the  very  institution  of  the 


THE  WAR  403 

Crown;  and  some  rich  men  had  spoken  of  the  Republic; 
the  Revolutionary  exaltation  ran  very  high.  The  flight 
was  arrested:  the  royal  family  were  brought  back,  and  in 
a  sort  of  mechanical,  unconscious  way  ^reaction  gathered, 
force ;  after  all  (the  politicians  thought)  the  nation  must 
not  lose,  could  not  afford  to  lose,  might  lose  its  very  soul 
in  losing,  the  web  of  inheritance  which  had  come  to  it 
from  so  many  centuries. 

This  force  of  r^artinn.  exploded  when,  during  the  Feasts 
of  the  Federation,  three  weeks  after  the  return  of  the  royal 
family,  a  popularoutbreak  upon  the  Chnrgp  r|ft  Mars 
was  repressed  by  the  declaration  of  martial  law,  the  use  of 
the  Militia  under  La  Fayette,  and  the  authority  of  the 
Mayor  of  Paris. 

The  Revolution,"going  the  way  we  know  it  did,  the  hatreds, 
the  threats  of  vengeance  covertly  growing  from  that  day 
(which  the  poor  and  their  champions  had  already  christened 
among  themselves  the  "Massacre  of  Champ  de  Mars") 
take  on  a  great  importance;  but  to  the  people  of  the  time 
the  tumult  and  its  armed  repression  did  not  seem  of  any 
great  consequence  save  as  the  beginning  of  quieter  things. 
The  end  of  the  summer  was  principally  occupied  in  some 
speculation  as  to  what  the  new  Parliament  would  do  when  it 

should  be  convened  in  the  autumn.     That  Parliament  was 

-*n  ~ 

rest£iofee44irpewer:  the  NationajjVssembly  which  had  made 
the  Revolution  was  to  bedissolxed.     This  second  body  was 

*  •  "*-    ___  v 

to  do  no  more  than  elaborate Jhfi^dfibnls  nf  laws;    it  was 
called,  and  remains  to  history,  "  The Legist  Hvp  " 

By  an  ironical  accident,  this  very  Parliament  of  one  year, 
from  which  the  great  and  by  this  time  well-known^leaders 
of  the  early  Revolutionary  movement  were  specifically 
excluded  (for  no  man  might  sit  in  it  who  had  sat  in  the 


404  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

National  Assembly)  had  thrust  upon  it  the  duty  or  the  burden 
of  the  Great  War.  Such  was  the  Revolutionary  time  and  air, 
that  from  anywhere  genius  sprang;  and  through  these  men 
of  the  Legislative  —  so  many  of  them  young,  nearly  all  of 
them  unknown  —  chosen  only  to  sit  in  an  ephemeral 
assembly  for  a  year — there  blew  such  inspiration  as  Plato 
thought  to  blow  through  poets,  but  which,  in  times  of  social 
creation  blows  through  rhetoricians  too.  Chief  among  these 
was  the  group  of  men  from  the  South  who  were  later  called 
the  ffironde.  It  was  their  business  to  demand  and  to  with- 
stand the  first  assault  of  Europe,  and  indeed  before  the 
Parliament  met  at  all,  it  was  certain  that  the  assault  would 
come,  for  in  the  August  of  1791,  in  the  midst  of  the  reaction 
which  overshadowed  Paris,  and  while  the  principal  leaders 
of  the  Revolution  were  exiled  or  in  hiding,  there  was  drawn 
up  that  compact  between  the  German  monarchs  \vhich  is 
called  the  Declaration  of  Pillnitz. 

This  document  has  too  often  been  put  forward  as  an 
example  of  the  hesitation  and  moderation  of  the  Kings. 
Such  a  view  of  it  is  an  academic  reaction  from  the 
old,  popular,  and  vague  but  in  the  main  just  conception  that 
privilege  made  deliberate  war  upon  the  Revolution:  a 
conception  which  often  took  Pillnitz  for  the  inception  of 
that  counter- crusade. 

The  matter  can  be  presented  quite  simply  to  the  reader: 
The  Emperor,  Marie  Antoinette's  brother,  whom  we  have 
seen  so  eager,  had  the  flight  to  Varennes  succeeded,  to  move 
his  armies  at  once,  combined  at  Pillnitz  with  the  King  of 
Prussia  in  an  appeal  to  all  monarchical  governments  that 
they  should  use  such  strength  as  might  give  back  to  the  King 
of  France  his  old  arbitrary  power,  and  re-establish  him 
therein.  The  two  allies  swear  publicly  that  they  will  use 


THE  WAR  405 

all  necessary  force,  when  such  an  appeal  bears  fruit,  to 
support  this  universal  assault  upon  the  French  people,  and 
meanwhile  they  will  direct  their  troops  to  the  best  striking 
points  from  which  the  military  action  of  that  people  may 
he  paralysed. 

There  is  the  Declaration  of  Pillnitz  in  a  few  words;  and 
while  one  partisan  may  insist  upon  its  caution  or  nullity, 
another  upon  its  insolence  and  provocation,  all  must  agree 
who  read  history  quietly  and  without  a  brief,  that  it  was  a 
violent  and  public  declaration  of  hostile  intention  as  it  was 
also  the  first  definite  public  act  from  which  hostilities  sprang. 

The  Parliament  met  in  September.  Its  proposed  second- 
ary value  soon  proved  to  be  primary;  the  splendid  definition, 
rapidity  and  precision  of  the  National  Assembly  was  well 
reflected  among  these  younger  and  less  tried  men :  but  much 
more  powerful  than  Parliament  was  the  growing  exaltation 
of  the  populace. 

That  had  many  roots:  the  oblivion  of  the  French  (after 
forty  years)  of  what  war  might  mean,  the  impatient  passion 
for  any  solution  which  all  feel  during  a  moment  of  strain, 
most  of  all  the  moral  certitude  (and  how  well  founded !)  that 
if  the  enemy  delayed  they  delayed  only  for  their  own  purpose, 
and  that  war  must  certainly  come  —  all  these  pressed  to  the 
final  issue:  the  noise  of  the  cataract  could  already  be  heard. 

As  to  the  acceptation  of  the  Constitution  by  the  royal 
family,  their  reluctance, .  the  Queen's  anger,  it  but  little 
concerns  the  story  of  her  fate.  At  bottom  she  and  Louis 
also  were  willing  enough  by  this  time  to  sign  anything  and 
to  swear  anything.  The  war  must  come,  and  the  war  would 
solve  all.  The  Queen  herself,  who  was  now,  as  I  have 
shown,  in  the  thick  of  the  intrigue,  put  it  simply  enough  to 
the  man  she  most  loved,  to  Fersen^  in  a  note  that  has  been 


406  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

preserved  and  which  she  wrote  before  the  end  of  September. 
"It  would  have  been  more  noble  to  refuse ^the_Constitu- 
tion)  .  .  .  it  is  essential  to  accept_(it),  in  order  to 
^cTestrov  anv  suspicion  that  we  ai£_iioL-aduiii£Lin  goo3~Taith.: 


>o  far  as  concerns  that  unhappy  and  devoted  life,  one 
incident  deserves  a  very  special  mention.  Twice  in  the 
autumn  there  had  been  talk  of  yet  another  flight:  the  plan 
was  not  impossible,  but  it  had  been  dropped,  partly  because 
the  King  might  have  had  to  fly  alone,  partly  because  the 
Queen  was  confident  that  a  show  of  strength  and  a  vigorous 
menace  upon  the  frontier  would  be  enough  to  change  all. 
In  the  new  year  the  proposal  for  their  escape  took  on  a  more 
serious  form,  and  Fersen  reappeared  for  the  last  time,  and 
for  the  last  time  saw  the  Queen. 

It  was  upon  Saturday  the  llth  of  February,  1792,  that  he 
started  upon  that  perilous  journey,  and  it  was  his  business 
to  discuss  in  detail  and  by  word  of  mouth  whether  escape 
was  still  possible.  Upon  Monday,  the  13th,  at  evening,  he 
passed  the  barrier  of  Paris.  He  saw  the  Queen  before  he 
slept,  and  next  day  at  midnight  spoke  secretly  to  her  and  to 
her  husband  together.  He  carefully  noted  before  them  the 
routes  that  might  be  followed:  the  method  of  escape:  per- 
haps (as  had  appeared  in  several  plans)  the  string  of  forests 
that  run  up  from  Paris  north-eastward  toward  the  marches 
of  Flanders. 

The  King  and  the  Queen  wasted  no  little  time  in  that  mid- 
night hurried  parley  in  reproaches  against  the  ingratitude 
of  all,  and  in  bewailing  their  isolation.  The  next  day  Fer- 
sen left  with  nothing  done.  He  returned  indeed  to  Paris 
four  days  l&ter,  but  he  dared  not  enter  the  palace.  The 
whole  thing  was  futile  and  every  plan  had  broken  down. 

He  never  saw  her  again. 


THE  WAR  407 

A  fortnight  later  he  wrote  his  King,  in  Sweden,  detailing 
all  that  they  had  told  him. 

Before  he  could  reply  or  act,  the  King  of  Sweden  had  been 
shot  in  a  masked  ball  at  Stockholm,  and  some  days  later,  as 
the  reader  knows,  he  had  died. 


The  Declaration  of  War  had  not  only  broken  the  original 
plan  of  the  Queen;  it  had  changed  from  a  general  and  partly 
passive  to  a  particular  and  active  terror  the  life  of  Paris 
around  her.  Nothing  had  yet  appeared  to  show  as  a  reality 
what  all  knew  in  theory,  the  extreme  peril  of  the  nation,  the 
military  certitude  inspiring  the  Allies,  the  despair  increasing 
among  what  was  left  of  the  French  Regulars.  There  had 
indeed  been  desertions  immediately  following  the  declaration 
of  war,  especially  desertions  of  the  German  mercenaries,  in 
bulk.  A  skirmish,  or  rather  a  panic  upon  the  frontier,  had 
also  given  evidence  of  the  rot  in  the  jumble  of  armed  men 
whom  the  Revolution  could  summon.  The  first  tiny  action 
—  it  was  hardly  an  action  at  all  — had  seen  mutinies  and  the 
massacre  of  officers.  Paris  once  more  rose  and  fermented, 
and  there  was  a  surging  around  the  walls  of  the  palace. 
The  enemy  had  not  yet  crossed  the  frontier;  but  in  the  short 
breathing-space  before  he  should  appear,  and  while  the 
royal  family  were  holding  a  fortress,  as  it  were,  for  their 
own  security  until  that  enemy  should  arrive,  Parliament 
put  as  a  sort  of  ultimatum  to  the  King  a  demand  for  th 
execution  of  two  decrees :  one  against  the  Clergy  who  woul 
not  subscribe  to  the  Civic  Oath;  a  second  in  favour  of  t 
formation  of  a  camp  of  20,000  volunteers  under  the  wal 
of  Paris. 

The  error  of  uniting  in  onejg^uisition  two  such  diverse 


408  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


posterity  can  recognise.  For  the  men  of  the  time 
there  was  a  plain  link  between  either  demand,  for  the 
recalcitrant  Clergy  seemed  to  them  nothing  more  than  anti- 
nationalists,  and  it  seemed  to  them  that  nothing  but  an 
anti-national  desire  for  the  occupation  of  Paris  by  the 
foreigner  could  make  the  King  hesitate  to  permit  the  forma- 
tion of  the  camp  of  volunteers. 

It  was  upon  the  19th  of  June  that  the  King  published  his 
veto,  against  both  these  bills  or  projects  of  the  Parliament, 
behind  wrhich  lay  the  violent  opinion  of  active  Paris.1 

What  follows  is  well  known.  Paris  rose,  and  rising 
poured  into  the  palace.  It  was  the  20th. 

The  20th  of  June:  the  anniversary  of  the  flight:  the 
summer  solstice  fatal  to  the  Bourbons. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  rising^  was  artificial  and 
arranged.  The  same  nonsense  is  talked  of  the  St.  Bartholo- 
mew. No  one  who  has  seen  such  things  can  believe  them 
artificial.  They  are  corporate  things.  There  was  little 
violence,  though  there  were  many  arms  among  those  thou- 
sands upon  thousands;  and  as  they  poured  through  the 
rooms,  which  opened  one  into  the  other  like  a  gallery,  they 
were  not  much  more  (save  for  their  rough  clothes  and  their 
arms)  than  the  same  populace  which  had  demanded  for 
generation  after  generation,  and  had  obtained,  the  right  to 
see,  to  visit,  to  touch  their  public  King. 

The  Court  had  forgotten  the  popular  conception  of  the 
Monarchy;  but  the.^ogulace  necessariljjDreserves  a  longer 
memory  than  the  rich.  The  thing  was  a  menace,  upon  the 
whole  not  ill-humoured:  a  violent  recollection  that  the  King 
was  the  servant  of  the  common  weal,  and  its  symbol,  some- 
thing to  be  handled,  met,  and  perhaps  ordered.  The  mob, 

1  And  what  was  more  significative,  the  whole  of  the  little  wealthy  reactionary  minority  was  opposed  to  the 
projects,  and  signed  a  petition  in  proof  of  its  opposition. 


THE  WAR  409 

in  whom  atheists  can  see  no  more  than  a  number  of  poor 
men,  cried  out  its  significant  cries,  against  "  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Veto,"  making  a  popular  jest  of  this  public  power.  But 
in  those  moments  when  one  jest  perhaps  might  have  put  the 
King  at  the  head  of  popular  emotion  again,  he  and  his  wife 
remained  no  more  than  what  the  decline  of  the  Monarchy 
had  made  them;  individuals  in  peril,  and  courageous;  not 
the  Nation  incarnate. 

If  any  Angel  had  for  its  function  the  preservation  of  the 
French  Crown  and  Nation,  that  Angel,  watching  such  a  gulf 
between  the  people  and  the  Monarchy,  must  have  despaired 
of  the  latter's  hope  and  of  the  former's  survival:  neverthe- 
less, despite  that  divorce,  the  French  people  after  grievous 
wounds  have  survived. 


The  last  group  which  that  roaring  torrent  of  the  rabble 
saw  was  the  Queen  and  her  children,  her  friends,  especially 
Madame  de  Lamballe  and  the  governess,  the  Duchess  of 
Tourzel,  a  soldier  or  two,  a  minister  and  one  or  two  others, 
crowded  in  the  recess  of  a  window  behind  a  great  table  which 
had  been  pushed  into  the  embrasure  to  defend  them.  The 
little  heir  to  that  Monarchy  which  had  failed  to  understand 
sat  on  the  table,  very  much  afraid,  and  the  Queen  put  on 
his  head  with  loathing  the  red  cap  of  liberty  which  the  mob 
demanded.  The  day  was  sweating  with  heat,  the  cap 
was  thick  and  dirty,  and  Santerre,  who  was  there,  passing 
them  forward  by  bands  in  front  of  the  table,  a  popular  leader 
of  the  crowd,  seems  to  have  ordered  that  it  should  be 
removed.  It  was  already  nearly  dark;  it  was  half -past 
eight  before  that  violent  but  not  tragic  tumult  had  sub- 
sided, and  before  the  last  of  the  street  people  went  back  out 


410  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  the  palace,  which  they  thought  rightly  a  public  thing,  on 
to  the  public  paving  which  at  least  was  still  certainly  theirs. 

Outside,  during  all  that  night,  all  the  talk  was  of  the  war. 

When  would  the  invaders  cross  the  frontier  and  when 
would  the  first  shock  come  ? 


XVI 
THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE 

FROM  HALF-PAST  EIGHT  IN  THE  EVENING  OF  THE  20rn  JUNE,  1792, 
TO  EIGHT  IN  THE  MORNING  OF  THE  lOra  AUGUST,  1792 

THE  noisy,  good-natured,  and  very  dangerous  mob 
had  gone  at  last;  their  final  stragglers,  gazing, 
curious  and  tired,  at  the  pictures  and  the  gilding  (the 
trappings  of  their  Public  King  in  his  great  Public  Palace), 
had  wandered  out.  A  few  steps  on  the  wide  stone  stairs  of 
the  central  pavilion  were  still  heard  lazily  descending. 
The  dishevelled  family  was  at  rest. 

A  little  group  of  Deputies  remained  behind,  and  talked 
in  low  and  careful  voices  to  the  King  and  Queen  —  prin- 
cipally to  the  Queen,  for  she  was  voluble.  She  was  suave, 
though  somewhat  garrulously  suave.  "Would  not  some 
of  these  gentlemen  come  and  see  her  put  the  Dauphin 
to  bed?"  A  familiar  appeal  made  by  the  very  wealthy  to 
the  middle  class  rarely  fails.  They  followed  respectfully  and 
a  little  awkwardly  to  where,  in  a  small  bed  out  of  her  room, 
the  child  slept.  She  had  him  ready  for  bed  in  a  few  moments ; 
then  she  said  to  him  smiling: 

"Tell  the  gentlemen  you  love  the  Nation,  darling." 

The  drowsy  child  repeated  mechanically,  "I  love  the 
Nation." 

The  Middle  Class  were  enchanted.  She  laid  him  down, 
doubtless  with  every  maternal  charm;  she  turned  to  go 
before  them,  certainly  with  an  exaggeration  of  that  excessive 

411 


412  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

carriage  which  had  delighted  so  many  foreigners  and  depen- 
dants for  now  twenty  years  and  had  done  much  to  lose  her 
the  respect  of  her  French  equals  at  the  Court.  The  select 
committee  of  the  Middle  Class  came  after. 

"See  what  damage  they  have  done:  look  at  these  doors!" 
The  Deputies  stooped  solemnly  to  examine  the  broken  panels 
and  the  hinges  torn  from  their  screws,  the  oak  splinters 
showing  dark  against  the  white  paint  and  the  gold.  They 
admitted  serious  damage — they  regretted  it. 

"Who  is  the  proper  authority  to  take  note  of  this?" 
They  looked  at  one  another;  then  one  of  them,  remembering 
the  Constitution,  Liberty  and  the  rest  of  it,  said: 

"Nowadays  the  proper  authority  before  which  to  bring 
such  misdemeanours  is  a  Justice  of  the  Peace." 

"Very  wTell,  then,"  she  replied  sharply,  "send  for  one." 

A  servant  was  despatched  and  returned  with  a  Justice 
of  the  Peace.  He  gravely  took  written  notes  of  all : 

"Item:   the  lower  left  panel  broken; 

"Item:  the  upper  left  panel  cracked; 

"Item:  the  lower  right  hinge  of  the  door  torn  off,  and  the 
post  splintered." 

All  was  done  in  order,  and  they  returned  to  find  the  King. 

The  King  was  annoyed.  They  noticed  him  grumbling 
and  moving  his  lips  and  teeth.  He  was  even  a  little  excited, 
but  his  training  in  names  and  faces,  which  is  the  acquired 
talent  of  high  functionaries,  served  him  well.  He  spoke 
with  authority,  knowing  each  of  them  and  addressing 
them  in  turn,  and  after  speaking  of  the  mob  he  particularly 
complained  that  roughs  climbed  the  palings  of  the  Tuileries 
gardens  and  disturbed  his  privacy.  The  Queen  interrupted 
from  time  to  time  to  reproach  them.  "Why  had  they  not 
prevented  the  procession  of  the  mob  through  the  palace  ? 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  413 

Why,  at  least,  had  they  rot  given  warning?  The  Depart- 
ment had  done  its  duty!  Why  not  they?"  The  King 
continued  in  another  tone,  till,  at  last,  some  of  them  coming 
nearer  home  asked  him  for  news  of  the  armies.  His  dignity 
as  the  Executive  (which  he  still  was)  forbade  him  any  full 
replies:  he  had  good  news,  very  good  news.  .  .  .  He 
could  tell  them  no  more. 

They  suspected  [we  know]  that  there  was  no  news  at 
all  ...  only  a  few  packed,  ill-ordered  garrisons  awaiting 
the  attack;  a  long  line  in  the  field  all  the  way  from 
Belfort  to  sea,  numbering  but  80,000  men,  and  half  of 
that  an  ill-clothed  helter-skelter  of  broken  companies: 
divided  counsel,  no  plan,  and,  a  few  marches  east,  that  slow 
concentration  of  the  allies  upon  Coblenz  which  now  drew  to 
its  close. 

So  the  Deputies  left  them :  the  sky  was  still  full  of  light  on 
this  slowest  night  of  the  year,  and  Paris  after  the  uproar  of 
that  bacchanalian  Wednesday,  the  20th  of  June,  was  silent. 


Meanwhile  the  South  had  risen. 

On  that  same  Wednesday  evening  messengers  from 
Montpellier  had  reached  Marseilles;  on  Friday  they  were 
feasted,  and  when  the  banquet  was  over,  one  of  the  Mont- 
pellier men,  Mireur,  with  a  voice  of  bronze,  rose  to  sing  them 
a  new  song.  It  had  come  from  the  frontier,  he  said ;  as  for 
the  air  he  did  not  know  whence  it  was,  but  he  thought 
(wrongly)  from  the  opera  "Sargines."  He  sang  it,  and  the 
men  that  gathered  outside  the  open  windows  to  hear  upon 
that  summer  evening,  the  guests  within,  and  soon  all  the 
city,  were  swept  by  the  MARSEILLAISE. 

The    next    day    the    Municipality    of    Marseilles    met, 


414  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

determined  upon  spontaneous  action  in  company  with  all 
the  South :  they  decreed  the  raising  of  a  volunteer  battalion 
in  spite  of  the  Crown ;  the  next,  the  Sunday,  when  all  were 
abroad  and  could  read,  the  walls  were  placarded  with  the 
appeal  to  join.  Monday  and  Tuesday  the  names  poured  in : 
a  committee  was  chosen  to  pick  only  the  best  in  character 
and  health.  Its  work  was  at  once  accomplished;  within 
twenty-four  hours  five  hundred  had  been  so  chosen  out  of 
the  throng  of  volunteers;  within  forty-eight  they  had  been 
enrolled,  drilled  for  hours,  and  separated  by  companies 
under  officers  of  their  choice.  Three  days  of  rapid  organisa- 
tion and  continued  drilling  followed:  the  route  was  traced, 
a  time-table  drawn  up,  the  expenses  estimated  and  provided. 
A  section  of  guns  (harnessed  to  men)  with  its  caisson  was 
drafted ;  the  stores  and  baggage  were  concentrated  too.  Upon 
Monday,  the  2nd  of  July,  at  nightfall,  a  week  after  the  first 
appeal,  through  a  crowd  of  all  the  city  that  pressed  on  every 
side,  they  marched  out  by  the  northern  gate  of  Marseilles 
singing  their  song.  Next  morning,  just  as  the  arid  eastern 
hills  began  to  show  against  the  beginnings  of  the  dawn, 
they  entered  Aix  and  had  accomplished  the  first  stage  of 
their  advance.  "The  Executive"  -  that  is,  the  Crown  - 
had  warned  every  authority  to  disperse,  thejn  and  all  such 
others,  but  the  wind  on  Paris  was  from  the  South,  and  they 
and  their  song  could  not  be  hindered. 


Meanwhile,  in  the  German  town  of  Frankfort,  there 
hummed  a  continually  increasing  crowd :  the  Emperor  was  to 
be  crowned.  Here,  therefore,  were  all  those  who  had  a 
business  with  Austria,  and  here  was,  among  others,  a  Swiss 
Huguenot,  Ma  ]  1  et jjnPan .  upon  whom  more  than  upon  any 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  415 

other  in  that  town  the  King  of  France  and  the  Queen  in  her 
extremity  depended.  He  was  a  journalist,  very  keen  about 
accounts  and  probity  in  small  money  matters,  of  the  bour- 
geoisie, sedate  and  perpetually  attempting  to  understand 
the  French  people,  now  from  this  side,  now  from  that: 
they  interested  him  hugely.  His  work,  however,  was  not  to 
pursue  this  fascinating  study,  but  to  save  the  persons  of  the 
royal  family  he  served  :  in  this  task  he  showed  that  same 
discipline  and  devotion  which  his  compatriots  were  later  to 
show  under  arms.  He  bore  as  his  chief  principles,  as  his  last 
instructions,  two  orders:  one  order  to  keep  the  farce  of  thq 
varjgoing,  and  never  to  let  it  be  hinted  publicly  or  breathed 
that  there  was  collusion  between  those  who  sent  him  and  the, 


invading  Austrian_]3ower"     The  other  order  was  thi^ 
"produce  a  manifesto  to  be  signed  from  the  camp  of  the  i 
ing  army,  and  to  strike,  as  it  was  hoped,  blind  terror  into  ihe 
leaders  of  the  NationajjiuEEement  :  the  time  had  come  (so  it 
was  imagined  at  the  Tuileries)  to  threaten  the  worst  and  so 

tame  Paris. 

*•  . 

He  took  his  journey  (but  was  scrupulous  to  give  an  exact 
account),  left  his  family  in  Paris,  passed  through  Geneva, 
his  home,  and  now,  by  the  end  of  June,  was  here  at  Frankfort. 

He  had  chosen  his  centre  well,  for  upon  Frankfort  con- 
verged all  news,  and  from  Frankfort  went  out  ill  orders: 
orders  to  Coblenz  whence  the  armies  were  to  march  to  the 
relief  of  the  Tuileries;  news  from  Brussels,  which  was  of 
the  first  moment,  for  here  Mercy  d'Argenteau,  the  Mpert 
upon  France,  was  ready  every  day  to  advise;  here  was  the 
danger  of  attack  from  France  most  felt,  and  here,  most 
central  of  all,  was  Fersen. 

Fersen  heard  regularly  from  Paris,  wrote  as  regularly. 
Since  the  death  of  the  King  of  Sweden  his  official  position 


416  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

had  been  less,  but  those  whose  business  it  was  to  discover 
truth,  the  diplomats,  knew  that  the  last  and  most  intimate 
thought  of  the  royal  family  was  to  be  reached  through  that 
channel  alone.  Austria  and  Prussia,  Frankfort,  that  is, 
hardly  acted  upon  his  advice  as  to  war  (and  in  his  diary  he 
bitterly  reproaches  them  for  their  neglect)  ,  but  they  sucked 
his  knowledge  —  and  to-day  it  is  through  him  that  we  know, 
somewhat  late,  the  principal  truths  upon  those  last  few  weeks 
of  the  French  Monarchy. 

What  did  the  Court  of  the  Tuileries  demand,  and  what 
will  was  behind  it  in  so  demanding  ? 

Mallet  du  Pan  was  there  at  Frankfort  with  no  credentials 
but  a  sheet  of  note-paper,  and  written  on  the  top  of  it  in 
Louis'  hand  two  lines  of  writing  unsigned.  "  The  person 
who  shall  present  this  note  knows  my  intentions;  entire 
confidence  may  be  put  in  what  he  says."  What  instructions 
had  he  ? 

Fersen  was  stationed  at  Brussels  with  an  organised  letter- 
service  between  the  Tuileries  and  himself,  written  in  secret 
ink,  full,  confidential  and  direct.  All  that  he  told  Mercy 
or  another  went  to  Frankfort.  What  message  was  thus 
continually  conveyed  ? 

The  demandjTom  thft-Tnifcrifts  was  an  urgent  demand 
for  immediate  invasion,  and  forerunning  it,  a  drastic  pro- 
clamation from  the  armed  force  at  Coblenz  :  the  will  which 
inspired  that  demand  was  the  TvjU-o 


A  mn  in  flight  could  cover  the  distance  from  Paris  to 
Brussels  in  two  days;  an  urgent  runner  in  three.  Nor- 
mally the  courier  with  his  post-bag  arrived  on  the  morning 
of  the  fourth  day.  From  Brussels  to  Frankfort  worse  roads, 
varying  frontiers,  and  the  German  lethargy  between  them 
compelled  news  to  a  delay  of  close  upon  a  week. 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  417 

The  ferment  in  Paris  was  rising;  the  Federals  of  the 
South  were  on  the  second  day's  march  northward  when, 
in  the  middle  of  the  first  week  of  July,  the  Queen,  whose 
policy,  or  rather  passion,  could  bear  no  more  delay,  wrote 
to  Mercy  and  to  Fersen  separately  two  letters  of  great  weight. 
These  letters  have  never  yet  been  given  their  due.  The 
student  should  note  them  closely  if  he  is  to  understand  all 
that  followed. 

The  originals  have,  perhaps,  not  come  down  to  us,  but 
either  man,  Fersen  or  Mercy,  noted  their  intents,  and  we 
thus  know  them. 

These  letters  Lasserez  brought  into  Brussels,  riding  on  the 
morning  of  Sunday,  the  8th  of  July,  and  on  the  next  day 
Mercy  and  Fersen,  meeting,  consulted  on  their  purport. 
The  Queen,  with  whom  the  project  of  such  an  engine  was 
familiar,  now  definitely  demanded  a  separate  and  nominal 
threat  against  the  town  of  Paris,  and  a  menace  that  the  whole 
pity  should  be  •  jigld  hostage  by  the  invading  German 
armies  against  the  safety  TJFlier  husband,  herself  and  her 
child.  This  clause  her  judgment  of  the  French  character 
assured  her  to  be  efficacious ;  this  clause  she  insisted  should 
bemadded  to  the  Manifesto  which  was  even  now  preparing. 

It  was  upon  July  the^  9th~  I  say,  that  the  two  men  met 
and  consulted  upon  the  Queen's  orders:  that  day  they  sent 
off  command  or  counsel  to  the  Rhine. 

On  the  14th,  while,  in  that  same  Paris,  Louis  was  once 
more  swearing  to  the  Constitution  upon  the  Champ  de  Mars, 
while  hour  for  hour,  far  off  on  the  Rhone  a  priest  receiving 
the  Marseillaise  Battalion  was  adding  his  famous  verse 
"of  the  Children"1  to  their  famous  hymn,  in  Frankfort  the 
last  of  the  Emperors  was  receiving  with  incredible 

1 "  Nous  entrerous  dans  la  Carriere,"  &c.,  the  best  verse  and  the  only  poetry  of  the  lot. 


418  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

magnificence  the  Crown  of  the  Empire.  The  note 
inspired  by  Marie  Antoinette  was  at  the  gates  of  his  town. 

It  entered:  Mallet  saw  it.  "Paris  is  to  be  destroyed  by 
fire  and  the  sword  if  the  royal  family  are  harmed":  it  was 
approved.  From  Frankfort  it  went  back  as  a  new  clause 
to  Coblenz;  there  it  was  incorporated  in  the  Manifesto 
and  signed.  Immediately,  the  ink  barely  dry,  it  was  pub- 
lished (upon  the  25th  of  July)  to  the  world,  above  the  sig- 
nature of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  and  in  the  name  of  that 
perfect  and  mechanical  army  which  Prussia  in  especial  could 
move  with  the  precision  of  a  physical  law  upon  the  capital 
that  phrase  had  doomed. 

This  was  the  origin  of  that  famous  Clause  VIIL  which 
ordered,  if  the  Tuileries  were  forced,  nay,  if  submission  to 
the  Royal  Family  was  not  at  once  made,  that  feussi& 
and  Austria  would  take  "anjmforgettable^yengeance,'' 
that  Paris  should  be  given  up  "to  military  execution  and 
subversion,  and  the  guilty  rebels  to  the  death  they  deserve.," 

Such  was  Marie  Antoinette's  one  piece  of  formulated 
policy  —  the  first  in  which  she  had  been  able  to  act  as  clearly 
as  she  saw;  it  was  also  (her  last  interference  in  political 
affairs.  It  had  been  lit  by  her  hand,  this  match  that  fired 
the  hesitating  war:  it  had  run  its  train  through  Brussels  to 
Frankfort  and  back  to  Coblenz,  lingering  in  no  one  place 
for  a  full  day:  now  it  had  touched  powder.  Three  days 
later  the  Manifesto  was  spoken  of  in  Chalons;  secret  copies 
were  in  print,  the  King  received  it. 

All  Paris  knew  it,  though  not  yet  officially,  when  upon 
the  evening  of  Sunday,  the  29th  of  July,  the  dusty 
500  of  Marseilles  with  their  guns,  crossing  the  bridge  at 
Charenton,  saw  the  distant  towers  of  Notre  Dame  above 
the  roofs  of  Paris  and  reached  their  goal. 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  419 

Let  soldiers  consider  the  nature  of  this  exploit,  and  politi- 
cians consider  what  that  civilisation  is  whose  comprehension 
I  have  shown  throughout  these  pages  to  have  so  vainly 
fatigued  so  many  aliens. 

The  French  of  Marseilles  had  trained  for  but  three  days. 
They  had  left  the  Mediterranean  in  the  height  of  a  torrid 
summer;  their  organisation  was  self-made,  their  officers 
self-chosen,  their  discipline  self-imposed.  They  had  cov- 
ered five  hundred  miles  of  route,  dragging  their  cannon, 
at  the  rate  of  precisely  eighteen  miles  a  day;  they  planked 
across  the  bridge  at  this  the  end  of  their  advance,  solidly, 
in  formation,  still  singing  their  song,  and  at  the  roll-call 
every  name  was  answered.  .  .  .  Their  small  numbers 
have  made  them  appear  to  some  historians  insignificant 
(or  a  legend),  to  others  rather  a  symbol  of  the  military 
power  in  the  populace  which  was  to  sack  the  palace  than  the 
attack  itself,  but  they  were  more;  they  were,  as  tradition 
justly  represents  them,  the  framework  of  the  force  that 
decided  the  critical  day  of  the  Revolution,  as  their  song  was 
its  soul. 

They  marched  in  next  morning  by  the  St.  Antoine  Gate, 
with  their  drums  and  colours  before  them,  the  crowds  of  the 
suburbs  blackening  the  site  on  which  the  Bastille  had  stood  ; 
and  half  Paris,  as  it  were,  going  out  to  meet  them.  They 
passed  over  to  the  Island,  formed  at  the  Mairie  where  Petion 
the  Mayor  greeted  them;  re-crossed  the  river  (followed  by  the 
crowd)  and  took  their  places  in  the  barracks  assigned  to 
them,  upon  a  corner  of  what  is  now  the  Boulevard  des 
Italiens  ;  ^fromjliateyenirig  the  struggle  between  the  City  and 


to  follow  was  but  a  manoeuvring  for  position  on  either  side, 
that  of  the  populace  and  of  the  Tuileries. 


420  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

This  last  had  now  for  long  been  steadily  arming  and 
was  already  strong.  The  King,  the  executive,  held  the 
arsenals,  the  regular  army  and  a  good  half,  even,  of  the  auton- 
omous Militia.  What  was  of  more  importance,  the  Crown 
and  its  advisers  could  rely  not  only  upon  the  machinery 
but  upon  the  devotion  of  the  one  well-disciplined  corps  which 
had  not  gone  to  the  front:  the  JWly-ffliarH.  These  excel- 
lent mercenaries,  nearly  all  Swiss  by  birth  and  nearly  all 
ignorant  of  the  French  language,  were  precisely  such 
material,  human  for  courage  and  mechanical  for  obedience, 
as  should  overcome  almost  any  proportion  of  civilians  — 
especially  such  as  might  be  spoilt  by  playing  at  soldiers. 
A  recent  law  passed  by  the  Legislative  Assembly  forbade 
their  presence  in  Paris.  The  "Executive"  parried  such 
mere  word  of  the  "Legislative"  by  posting  them  in  suburbs 
between  which  and  the  palace  were  only  woods  and  fields. 
When  danger  was  imminent,  in  the  last  hours  of  the  truce, 
they  were  marched  in  and  occupied  the  Tuileries,  law  or 
no  law. 

to  the  strengtk^f  the  King's  position 


against  the  populace  are  urged  (Napoleon,  no  mean  judge, 
and  an  eye-witness,  thought  it  the  stronger,  and  his  estimate 
of  the  King's  forces  brings  them  to  about  6,000  men); 
these  are,  first,  that  uo  building  pan  be  held  in  the  face  of 
artillery,  for  the  popular  force  had  guns  ;  secondly,  that  it 
was  but  defensive,  and  that  the  assault,  though  repulsed,  might 
return.  The  first  of  these  is  based  on  a  misconception  of  the 
terrain  and  supply,  the  second  upon  a  general  ignorance 
of  arms. 

For  the  first  :  there  was  no  position  whence  artillery,  even 
were  it  available  in  time,  could  be  used  against  the  long  walls 
of  the  palace,  §ayQ  by  passing  through  narrow  streets  easy 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE 


421 


for  infantry  to  defend,  and  as  a  fact  the  guns  were  not  avail- 
able to  the  populace  either  in  sufficient  amount  or  (what  is  of 
more  importance)  with  sufficient  training  and  supply. 
Guns,  popularly  manned  and  ill  supplied,  emplaced  in  the 
labyrinth  which  flanked  the  palace  could  be  captured  (and 
in  fact  were  captured)  by  the  trained  infantry  defending  it. 
The  short  range  alone  would  make  certain  the  destruction 
of  their  teams  by  sharp-shooting  from  the  upper  windows. 

The  second  objection  —  a  reply  to  which  shows  how 
considerable  were  the  King's  stake  and  chances  —  is  met 
by  the  military  consideration  that  nothing  more  needs  a 
special  organisation  and  training  than  a  successful  rally. 
An  assault,  if  it  is  of  any  consequence,  must  be  pressed  hard; 
if  it  is  fully  repulsed,  its  head  and  energy  are  crushed  at  their 
highest  vigour ;  the  defeat  is  more  crushing  than  that  of  a 
defensive  which  retires  in  time.  This  is  generally  true  of 
soldiers  in  the  field.  It  is  always  true  of  civilians.  The 
doubts  and  defections  that  accompany  a  civil  war,  the  con- 
version of  the  great  body  of  cowards  and  the  still  larger 
majority  of  indifferent  men,  the  claims  of  regular  domestic 
life,  the  absence  of  a  commissariat,  the  near  presence  of 
women  and  children,  the  contrast  which  the  return  of  quiet 
after  the  blow  presents  to  the  pain  and  terror  of  a  renewed 
struggle,  make  it,  as  it  were,  impossible  for  a  defeated  mob 
to  return,  after  an  interval,  against  the  regular  force  which 
has  repelled  it;  moreover,  the  regulars,  once  victorious,  can 
pursue,  scatter,  and  destroy  the  unorganised  mass,  while 
its  leaders  are  arrested  and  judged ;  jTnrJf?  fVi^rp 

history  of  a  popular  rising  which,  when  it  has 


422  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

calculation  of  victory  was  reasonable,  and  their  chances  of 
the  best  when  the  defence  of  the  palace  was  organised  in 
these  first  days  of  August.  It  was  calculated  that  the 
populace  even  with  artillery  could  do  little  against  the 
palace:  that  the  trained  men  would  crush  the  mob  once 
and  for  all.  Had  that  defence  succeeded,  the  advent  of  the 
foreigner,  perhaps  allied  with  one  of  the  royal  armies,  was 
secure.  That  the  defence  qfjthg^jpalacp  failed  was  due 
partly  to  the  lR^k^fJh^jPngpn^fy  in  fV>^  gajrisnngj  more  to 
a  1aYJg^nfjrmf:ecl  JeaHprsVijpj  but  most  of  all  to  the  unex- 
pected, incalculable  and  hitherto  unequalled  tenacity  and 
determination  of  the  insurgents. 

With  every  day  the  tension  increased.  The  Federation 
delegates  who  had  come  from  all  over  France  to  the  Feast 
of  the  14th  of  July,  many  of  whom  lingered  in  the  city, 
clashed  in  the  streets  with  courtiers,  and  with  those  who, 
whether  by  temperament  or  service,  were  still  supporters 
of  the  Crown. 

Just  when  the  Marseillais  wrere  entering  Paris,  Brunswick 
had  broken  camp  and  the  marg^  of  jjig  Alljps  into  TWnpp 
had  begun.  Less  than  a  hundred  miles  of  flat  road  along 
ttefMoselle  valley  separated  Brunswick  from  the  outposts 
of  the  defence:  Paris  itself  was  hardly  further  from  him 
than  is  York  from  London.  Rapidity  would  put  the  first 
garrisons  of  the  frontier  into  his  hands  within  a  week 
and  even  the  tardiness  which  the  Prussian  calculation  and 
the  Prussian  confidence  involve,  could  hardly  (it  was  thought) 
delay  for  a  fortnight  the  news  that  the  frontier  was  passed. 

In  the  passionate  quarrel  the  enemy's  character  of  invader 
was  forgotten.  Not  only  to  the  Court  but  to  many  who 
could  now  remember  nothing  but  the  ancient  tradition 
of  the  Monarchy,  the  enemy  seemed  a  saviour.  Bands  parad^ 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  423 

ing  the  pavement  by  night  threatened  their  fellow-citizens 
with  Brunswick,  songs  threatening  vengeance  against  the 
revolutionaries  were  heard  abroad  after  carousals,  and  a 
continuous  series  of  petty  street  fights,  increasing  in  gravity, 
enlivened  the  attention  of  either  side. 

Hardly  were  the  Marseillais  in  Paris,  for  instance,  when, 
that  same  evening  of  their  arrival,  after  a  banquet,  a  violent 
quarrel  between  them  and  a  body  of  armed  royalists  had 
broken  out.  They  carried  their  side-arms  only,  but  blood 
was  shed,  and  as  the  victims  upon  the  defeated  side  of  this 
brawl  were  carried  to  the  Guard-room  in  the  palace,  the 
Queen,  seeing  blood,  thought  that  the  final  struggle  had 
begun.  She  was  relieved  to  see  the  King  go  down  amongst 
the  wounded,  staunching  the  blood  of  one  with  his  hand- 
kerchief. Her  women,  fearing  what  she  had  feared,  began 
crying  each  for  one  of  hers.  "Is  my  husband  wounded?" 
"Is  mine?"  She  could  not  forbear  from  one  of  those 
insults  which  had  lost  her  the  affection  of  so  many,  and  from 
one  of  those  reflections  which  proved  how  little  she  conceived 
the  French  nobility.  "Ladies,"  she  said  to  the  noblewomen 
about  her,  "your  husbands  were  not  there."  She  had  no 
further  opportunity  to  revile  them:  it  was  perhaps  the  last 
expression  of  her  contempt  for  a  people  whom  she  believed 
to  have  grown  incapable. 

Either  side  continued  to  arm.  The  heat,  growing  steadily 
in  intensity,  had  bred  by  the  3rd  of  August  a  very  thunder- 
ous calm,  when  the  King  announced  to  the  Assembly  the 
terms  ™f  Fmriffwj^V's  Maflifrg*^  j^  was  received  in  silence, 
and  those  who  least  knew  and  know  the  city  thought  and  still 
think  that  the  news  was  met  with  indifference.  But  during 
that  night,  while  a  furious  storm  struck  Paris  time  and  time 
again  with  lightning,  one  workman's  suburb,  St.  Marcel,  sent 


424  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

word  to  another,  St.  Antoine:  "If  we  march  to  the  palace, 
will  you  ?"  In  the  midst  of  the  thunder,  messengers  returned 
saying:  "We  will!"  And  in  the  night  as  they  went  and 
came,  they  passed  men  bearing  the  dead  whom  the  lightning 
had  struck  and  killed.  Very  late  and  before  the  growling  of 
the  thunder  had  ceased,  certain  of  the  Marseillais  must 
go  to  the  walls  of  the  palace  and  shout  the  chorus  of 
their  song. 

Next  day  they  asked  for  ball-cartridge.  Sergent,  the 
official  guardian  of  the  Militia  ammunition-reserve,  had 
been  struck  in  the  face  when  he  had  gone,  as  his  duty  com- 
pelled him,  to  the  palace  a  fortnight  before;  he  had  been 
struck  because  his  politics  were  known.  Should  the  insur- 
rection fail,  his  signature  for  rebel  ammunition  would  be 
his  death  warrant.  Nevertheless,  remembering  that 
blow,  he  signed;  and  the  arsenal  served  out  ten  rounds 
a  man  to  the  Battalion  of  Marseilles.  They  crossed  the 
river  so  armed,  and  were  received  at  the  Cordeliers,1  which 
was  Danton's  fief,  and  Danton  restrained  them  till  such 
poor  and  hasty  organisation  as  could  be  undertaken  should 
be  effected.  It  was  the  end  of  the  week  which  had  seen 
their  entry  into  Paris,  and  nothing  had  been  done.  The 
Tuileries  continued  to  arm,  the  populace  to  convene,  and 
between  the  combatants  the  Parliament  daily  lost  its  power 
and  grew  bewildered. 

On  Sunday,  at  Mass,  always  a  public  occasion  in  the 
palace,  men  passed  and  re-passed  each  other  in  the  gallery, 
and  there  were  quarrels.  This  also  was  the  last  time  in 
which  the  Monarchy  was  treated  as  a  general  thing  —  with 
the  next  morning  its  isolation  began.  On  Monday  the  King 
was  begged  to  fly,  at  least  to  Compiegne:  the  road  was 

»  Now  the  Clinical  Museum  opposite  the  faculty  of  Medicine  in  the  University. 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  425 

guarded  and  it  was  an  easy  ride  if  he  went  alone  round  by 
Poissy  and  the  north.  He  refused.  On  Tuesday  the  last 
preparations  were  made  in  the  suburban  garrisons  of  the 
Crown  soldiers.  On  \Yednesday,  the  8th,  in  the  morning, 
the  Swiss  Guard  was  warned  that  on  the  morrow  before  dawn 
it  must  be  accoutred. 

The  Parliament,  more  and  more  bewildered,  vacillated  and 
was  hardly  heard  as  the  two  antagonists  rose  from  their 
places  to  fight.  The  deputies  refused  all  action.  It  had 
been  proposed  to  them  to  condemn  La  Fayette  for  a  hurried 
journey  he  had  taken  to  Paris  after  the  last  insurrection 
to  defend  the  King.  They  had  refused  by  a  very  great 
majority.  Now,  on  this  9th  of  August,  the  fatal  eve  of 
the  struggle,  they  debated  an  academic  point  —  whether 
the  King  should  abdicate  or  no;  they  adjourned  it  to  dine 
.  .  .  and  after  dinner  they  did  not  meet. 

But  all  the  while  upon  that  Thursday  evening,  troops 
were  afoot  along  the  Rueil  road;  the  doors  of  the  Palace 
were  open  to  men  who  entered  one  by  one,  armed  and  were 
stationed;  the  sound  of  carpenters  was  heard  in  the  Long 
Gallery  of  the  Louvre,  sawing  the  planking  of  the  floors,  by 
night,  to  make  a  gap  between  the  Louvre  and  the  Tuileries  ;* 
mounted^  police  rode  up  in  squads  to  the  courtyard  and 
took  their  stations;  there  was  also  the  rumbling  of  waggons. 
In  the  sections  south  of  the  river  and  eastwards  St.  Antoine 
and  St.  Marcel  were  moving;  wherever  the  people  had 
strained  at  the  leash  too  long,  the  popular  assembles  sat  in 
their  close  halls  choosing  the  men  who  should  take  the 
Guildhall  by  right  of  the  City's  decision  and  in  spite  of  the 
law,  and  proclaim  the  insurrection. 

The  last  of  the    day  declined  and  the  night  came,  but 

»  The  gap  was  six  feet  broad.    Too  narrow,  for  the  insurgents  next  day  leaped  it  and  bridged  it,  and  by 
that  entry  forced  the  Tuileries. 


426  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  unnatural  heat  would  not  decline,  and  the  open  windows 
all  about,  the  lights  shining  from  them,  and  the  vigil  which 
so  many  kept,  gave  the  effect  of  an  illumination. 

That  night,  short  and  stifling  as  it  was,  was  drowsy;  a 
necessity  for  sleep  oppressed  the  city.  Danton  himself, 
in  the  thick  of  the  rising,  attempted  a  moment  of  repose; 
he  had  hardly  lain  down  when  he  was  roused  again.  The 
watchers  in  the  palace  felt  midnight  upon  them  and  would 
have  slept.  The  barrack-beds  which  filled  the  attics  in  their 
regular  lines  were  strewn  with  men;  the  gentry  who  had 
volunteered,  certain  also  of  the  Militia,  lay  silent  in  the 
darkness,  their  muskets  slung  beside  them,  their  large  allow- 
ance of  cartridges  served.  Below  in  the  great  rooms  and  on 
the  stairways  groups  of  mixed  soldiery  lay  huddled,  servants 
armed,  and  policemen:  every  kind  of  man.  The  Regulars 
who  formed  the  core  of  this  force,  the  Swiss,  lounged  in  their 
bare  guard-room  or  sat  silent  upon  the  stone  benches  of  the 
yard ;  some  few  files  of  them  stood  at  ease  upon  the  stairs  of 
the  lesser  hall. 

Upon  this  silence  there  crashed  at  about  a  quarter  to  one 
o'clock  the  noise  of  cannon.  The  report  was  hard  and  close 
at  hand  —  it  came  from  the  Pont  Neuf  at  the  further  end  of 
the  Louvre,  and  the  united  fabric  of  the  long  walls  trembled 
to  it;  the  heavy  pictures  and  the  mirrors  shook.  The  six 
thousand  who  garrisoned  the  Tuileries  expected  an  imme- 
diate advance  of  the  insurrection :  for  a  moment  the  whole 
palace  was  roused.  Those  battalions  of  Militia  which  had 
been  camped  in  the  garden  for  a  reserve  began  to  file  in  by 
the  central  doors:  the  cavalry  mounted  to  take  up  their 
stations  at  the  narrow  issues  of  the  Louvre,  and  everywhere 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  427 

the  lights  moving  before  the  windows  of  the  vast  fa9ade 
showed  the  ordering  of  men. 

This  general  stir  had  hardly  arisen  when  it  was  perceived 
that  this  first  shot  had  been  but  a  signal,  for  to  the  call  of 
that  cannon  no  other  succeeded,  but  almost  immediately 
the  steeples  of  the  city  trembled  to  the  first  notes  of  bells. 

The  deep  and  heavy  bells,  that  had  for  centuries  raised  the 
alarm  of  invasion  or  of  fire,  began  to  boom  just  east  of  the 
University;  they  were  answered  by  the  peal  of  St.  Anthony 
over  the  river,  by  the  tocsins  of  St.  John  and  St.  Gervase; 
St.  Laurence  rang,  and  southward  upon  the  night  boomed 
the  huge  tower  of  the  Abbey,  which  had  heard  the  same 
sound  nine  hundred  years  before,  when  the  dust  of  the 
Barbarian  march  hung  over  Enghien,  and  smoke  went  up 
from  burning  farms  all  down  the  Seine.  The  Cathedral 
followed:  thenceforward  no  one  could  hear  the  striking  of 
the  hours,  for  the  still  air  of  the  night  pulsed  everywhere 
with  the  riot  of  the  bells.  Two  sounds  alone  could  pierce 
the  clamour:  the  high  bugle-call  to  which  the  French  still 
mobilise,  and  the  sullen  fury  of  the  drums.  The  horses, 
therefore,  of  the  defenders  in  the  courts  of  the  palace,  the 
continual  clattering  of  their  hoofs  upon  the  paving,  the 
clink  of  metal  as  the  lines  were  formed,  the  tramp  of  the 
reinforcements  arriving — all  the  movement  of  the  six  thou- 
sand who  gathered  to  support  the  Crown,  was  set  to  this 
music,  and  the  air  they  breathed  was  full  of  the  noise  of  the 
bells. 

Yet  for  some  hours  after  the  posts  had  been  taken  the 
advent  of  the  rebels  was  expected  in  vain.  Paris  seemed 
empty,  or  full  only  of  this  increasing  and  ominous  sound. 
Of  men  there  was  no  trace.  The  stone  courtyards  before 
the  palace  and  the  streets  that  led  to  the  Square  of  the 


428  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Carrousel  were  silent.  They  lay  open  and  deserted  under 
the  sky,  and  so  remained  even  when  the  first  stars  paled 
and  when  there  was  already  a  hint  of  dawn.  A  doubt  rose 
among  the  Royalists,  first  whispered,  then  openly  spoken, 
and  leading  at  last  to  jests:  the  insurrection  had  missed 
fire;  the  bells  had  failed.  No  voice  of  the  insurgents  had 
been  heard,  nor  had  any  rider  brought  news  of  their 
approach,  when  the  last  of  the  stars  had  gone  and  the 
Militia  companies,  still  remaining  as  a  reserve  in  the  western 
gardens,  saw  the  day  rise  gorgeously  beyond  the  palace  they 
were  to  defend. 

In  a  small  room  whose  window  looked  toward  the  east, 
the  Queen,  with  some  few  of  her  women,  waited  for  the 
day.  The  ceiling  was  low,  and  its  air  of  privacy  gave  some 
little  respite  from  the  strain  of  the  eve  and  of  the  morrow. 
She  lay  upon  a  sofa,  but  she  could  not  sleep;  she  spoke  but 
rarely  and  that  in  low  tones,  and  vaguely  watched  the  night. 
With  the  first  grey  of  the  morning  she  rose,  unrested,  and 
bade  them  dress  her  boy,  the  child  who  alone  in  that  great 
house  had  slept  throughout  the  alarms.  Then,  under  the 
growing  light,  she  saw  the  Princess  Elizabeth  near  her,  who 
called  her  and  took  her  to  a  window  whence  she  might  watch 
the  rising  of  the  sun.  They  stood  together  beside  the  open 
casement  gazing  at  the  city  in  silence. 

Early  as  was  the  hour  (it  was  but  little  past  four)  the 
tone  of  the  air  already  promised  a  blinding  summer's  day. 
The  end  of  darkness  had  lifted  no  mist  from  the  gardens. 
The  last  heats  of  yesterday  blended  with  the  new  warmth 
of  the  sunrise  that  stretched  bright  red  across  the  far  sub- 
urbs where  the  populace  stood  to  arms;  behind  the  con- 
fused high  roofs  and  spires  of  their  capital  the  two  Princesses 
saw  advancing  at  last  great  beams  of  power  and,  enflaming 


THE  FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  429 

the  city,  an  awful  daybreak.  The  younger  woman  was 
afraid  and  spoke  her  thought,  saying  that  it  looked  like 
some  great  disaster,  a  burning  spread  before  them. 

Now  that  it  was  broad  day  the  vigour  of  the  Queen 
returned.  She  became  again  the  will  of  the  defence,  and 
its  leader  —  if  it  had  a  leader.  She  had  not  expected 
defeat  even  in  the  worst  silences  of  the  night;  with  the  new 
day  she  was  confident  of  success. 

The  commander  of  the  Paris  Militia,  one  Mandat,  who 
had  lately  come  by  rote  to  that  function,  she  knew  to  be 
sound.  He  had  garrisoned  the  bridge-head  by  which  alone 
the  transpontine  mob  could  cross  the  river  to  the  palace; 
his  cavalry  also  held  the  narrow  arch  at  the  Guildhall,  by 
which  alone  the  east  end  could  come.  Petion  now  became 
the  mayor  of  Paris,  who  had  been  summoned  to  the  palace 
for  a  hostage,  had  gone  —  the  Parliament  had  demanded 
him  —  but  Mandat  remained  and  his  presence  sufficed  for 
her.  Upon  that  presence  she  relied :  when  she  came  to  seek 
him  she  found  that  he  too  had  disappeared.  The  Town 
Hall  had  summoned  him  twice,  and  twice  he  had  refused. 
At  the  third  summons  he  had  gone,  suddenly,  unescorted, 
"to  account  for  his  command."  She  began  to  wonder, 
but  her  hope  was  still  maintained.  She  crossed  to 
the  room  where  she  could  find  her  husband,  and  she 
engaged  upon  thejas^_actjvhich  freedom  permitted  her  to 
command. 

Still  pursued  by  memories  of  what  the  Court  had  been, 
she  determined  to  show  the  King  to  his  subjects,  and  to 
present  a  sight  which  should  exalt  his  soldiery  and  linger 
in  history  as  the  appeal  which  saved  him. 

The  King  obeyed  her  summons:  he  had  better  have 
remained  to  repose,  for  she  found  him  but  recently  awakened 


430  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

from  a  stupor  into  which  he  had  fallen  at  the  end  of  the 
night  when  all  his  garrison  had  risen  to  the  alarm. 

The  servitors,  the  gentlemen,  the  Militia,  and  the  strict 
Swiss  beside  them  saw,  as  they  stood  drawn  up  in  a  ramb- 
ling line  upon  the  western  garden  terrace,  the  figure  for 
which  they  were  to  die. 

He  appeared  at  the  main  central  door,  weary,  dishevelled, 
and,  as  it  were,  aged.  His  violet  coat  recalled  the  periods 
of  mourning.  The  shadow  in  which  he  stood  enhanced 
the  sombre  colour  of  his  clothing  and  the  pallor  of  his 
freckled  face;  his  stoutness  and  his  habitually  sanguine 
temper  rendered  that  pallor  unnatural  and  suggested  catas- 
trophe or  disease.  His  paunch  was  obvious,  his  hair 
deplorable.  With  such  an  introduction  to  their  loyalty  he 
wandered  heavily  from  end  to  end  of  the  line.  There  was 
a  laugh  —  by  one  light-head  he  was  covertly  insulted  as 
he  passed  —  he  was  certainly  of  less  and  less  moment  in  their 
eyes  with  every  step  he  took  in  Jhis  unhappy  review.  When 
it  abruptly  ended,  old  Mailly  went  down  stiffly  on  one  knee 
and  tendered  his  sword,  then  stiffly  rose  again.  Again  in 
the  ranks  some  one  laughed.  From  this  scene  the  King 
returned  to  his  room  in  silence. 

She  also,  the  Queen,  returned  from  it  angry  and  in  tears, 
the  more  embittered  that  she  herself  had  designed  the 
thing. 

The  first  news  that  met  her  on  her  return  to  the  palace 
was  the  death  of  Mandat.  As  the  details  were  told  her  she 
understood,  though  vaguely,  what  a  blow  had  fallen.  He 
had  reached  the  Town  Hall  "to  account  for  his  command," 
but  had  found  there,  not  the  hesitating  constitutional  body 
which  he  expected  and  which  had  a  right  to  summon  the 
head  of  the  Militia.  He  had  found  instead  a  ring  of  new 


THE   FALL  OF  THE  PALACE  431 

faces,  the  insurrectionary  CommjLi»e:  the  Revolution, 
maddened  and  at  bay,  had  glared  at  him  across  the  lights 
of  the  hall.  As  he  went  down  the  steps  to  the  street,  blinded 
by  that  vision  of  terror,  some  lad  shot  him  dead,  and  with 
that  deed  the  wfrole  plan  of  the  defence  crumbled.  The 
bridge-head  and  the  archway  wrere  abandoned. 

The  crowds  of  the  south  and  east  gathered  as  the  mor- 
ning advanced;  their  way  was  now  clear,  and  yet,  to  those 
watching  from  the  palace  windows,  it  still  seemed  as  the 
sun  rose  higher  that  the  movement  had  failed.  Seven 
chimed  above  the  central  portico;  it  chimed  slowly  upon 
bells  of  nearly  a  hundred  years;  the  half-hour  sounded,  and 
still  the  courts  of  the  Carrousel  lay  empty.  But  the  deserted 
air  was  ominous.  No  street  cries  rose  from  the  neighbour- 
ing market-stalls.  There  was  no  sound  of  workmen  upon 
the  new  building  of  the  bridge1  down  river;  the  regular 
sawing  of  stone  and  the  ring  of  hammered  iron  were  silent. 


At  last  a  head  showed  above  the  high  wooden  palings  that 
separated  the  courtyard  from  the  square.  Then  another, 
the  heads  of  ragged  street-boys,  who  peered  over,  standing 
on  their  companions'  shoulders.  A  stone  was  thrown. 
One  of  the  sentries  aimed,  and  in  a  twinkling  the  dirty, 
beardless  faces  disappeared.  As  yet  no  shot  had  been  fired. 

A  noise  like  that  of  swarming  bees  came  confusedly  from 
the  quays,  muffled  by  the  intervening  wing  of  the  Louvre. 
It  approached,  still  dull  and  blanketed  by  the  vast  building; 
for  a  moment  it  was  swallowed  up  in  the  deep  passage 
beneath  the  Louvre;  then,  with  an  immediate  and  over- 
whelming roar  it  burst  into  the  square  of  the  Carrousel. 

1  Now  called  the  Pont  de  la  Concorde. 


432  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Some  one  in  command  must  have  dashed  upstairs,  to  where 
from  the  higher  attic  windows  he  could  overlook  the  hoard- 
ing :  such  an  one  saw  the  Carrousel  crammed  with  a  violent 
whirlpool  of  men  that  seethed  and  broke  against  the  great 
oaken  gates  of  the  yard.  Even  as  he  looked  the  gates  gave 
way  or  were  opened  —  which  he  could  hardly  distinguish  in 
the  press.  The  inner  court  filled  as  the  torrent  of  arms 
surged  through  the  entry.  At  a  window  of  the  upper  floor 
certain  gentlemen  who  had  volunteered  knelt,  with  their 
muskets  upon  the  crowd  below. 
They  waited  for  the  order  to  fire. 


XVII 
THE  TEMPLE 

THE  vanguard  of  the  mob  came  pouring  in. 
They  swarmed  through  the  arches  under  the  Long 
Gallery  and  the  main  body  of  them  still  came  swing- 
ing up  to  it  along  the  riverside. 

The  sun,  well  up  and  brazen,  touched  the  metal  about 
them  and  sent  dancing  gleams  from  pikes  and  curved  hooks 
bound  to  staves.  Before  that  uneven  crowd  the  long 
shadows  of  morning  stood  out  sharply,  thrown  along  the 
uneven  paving  of  the  narrow  quays.  They  sang  or  jested: 
they  jostled  and  could  not  order  themselves.  There  were 
no  soldiers  among  this  first  batch  of  the  insurrection,  nor 
even  a  body  of  the  half-trained  Militia,  nor  had  they  any 
guns.  So  they  swarmed  through  the  public  archways 
under  the  Long  Gallery,  so  they  packed  and  surged  in  the 
square  of  the  Carrousel.  Before  them  were  the  walls  of  the 
central  courtyard  of  the  palace  and  a  great  gate  shut  against 
them. 

Of  the  fourteen  guns  that  the  palace  commanded,  five 
faced  them  in  this  court,  ready  to  fire  should  the  crowd 
burst  in.  Three  were  advanced  in  the  emptiness  of  the 
square;  two,  in  support,  were  just  outside  the  main  door, 
whence  the  central  staircase  of  the  Tuileries  swept  up  to 
the  royal  rooms.  At  that  door  the  lads  who  had  climbed 
the  outer  walls  of  the  courtyard  could  also  now  see  some 
-  few  of  the  Guard  drawn  up  in  formation  outside  the  palace 

433 


434  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

door  and  already  retiring;  the  rest  were  massed  behind 
these  in  the  hall :  the  solid  body  of  Swiss  who  were  the  kernel 
of  the  defence. 

These  thousand  mercenaries  and  more,  immovable  men, 
had  in  their  attitude  something  at  once  of  the  grotesque 
and  the  terrible.  Stiff  and  strict  as  lifeless  things  in  their 
red  and  white,  tight  hose  and  musket  erect  and  firm,  they 
were  ready  first  for  me  volley,  then  for  the  charge,  and  every 
man  (in  that  timeJwhen  ten  rounds  was  thought  a  day's 
provision)  carried  forty  rounds  upon  him.  The  pale> 
unmoved  faces  of  the  mountaineers  were  here  and  there 
diversified  by  some  livelier  face,  their  rough-cut  hair  by  the 
careful  barbering  of  the  wealthy,  for  there  were  gentry  of 
the  King's  who  had  borrowed  uniforms  of  the  Guard  and 
had  slipped  in  among  them  and  now  stood  part  of  the 
silent  rank. 

The  roaring  of  voices  in  the  Carrousel  beyond  the  walls  of 
the  courtyard  increased  continually;  the  other  noise  of  the 
sea  of  Paris  rose  with  it  every  moment,  and  on  the  first  floor 
where  the  Royal  Family  and  some  few  advisers  sat,  all  this 
gathering  crowd  outside  the  courtyard  walls  was  watched  by 
those  who  were  responsible  for  the  unity  of  the  nation  in 
face  of  the  advancing  invasion,  and  for  the  person  of  what 
was  still  the  King.  Chief  of  those  so  responsible  was  Roe- 
derer.  He  stood  there  for  that  new  public  authority,  the 
elected  county-body  which  alone  had  legal  power;  he  con- 
sidered only  the  necessary  survival  of  the  King. 

Already,  at  dawn,  he  had  advised  that  the  King  should 
leave  the  defence  to  others;  now,  hours  later,  as  the  mob 
and  its  noise  swelled  and  swelled,  he  insisted  once  more. 
It  was  but  a  personal  act  whose  value  in  the  military  thing 
that  followed  only  those  present  could  judge,  nay,  only  those 


THE  TEMPLE  435 


who  knew,  as  only  contemporaries  can  know  them,  the  per- 
sonal forces  at  work.  There  was  no  capitulation  here.  .  .  . 

But  in  the  judgment  of  the  greatest  master  of  war, 
Louis  leaving  the  defence  by  those  few  yards  deter- 
mined the  issue;  for  it  was  Napoleon,  himself  perhaps  a 
witness,  who  said  that  if  the  King  had  then  been  seen  on 
horseback  before  the  palace,  his  troops  would  have  had  the 
better  of  the  fight.  But  the  King  did  what  he  thought  was 
necessary  for  the  moment  of  peril,  and  guarded  his  family. 
He  said,  "Let  us  go."  As  he  passed  through  the  corridors 
of  the  palace  down  to  the  main  doors  upon  the  garden  side, 
he  said  to  those  who  heard  him,  "We  shall  be  back  soon." 
He  believed  it  and  they  also.  None  saw  in  this  precaution 
an  element  of  defeat,  and  yet  that  sort  of  shadow  which  doom 
throws  before  itself  as  it  advances  vaguely  oppressed  the 
palace. 

The  King,  the  Queen,  and  their  children,  Madame  de 
Lamballe  and  Madame  de  Tourzel,  the  governess,  the  hand- 
ful of  ministers  and  friends,  had  nothing,  to  do  with  the 
military  schemejofjjie  defence.  Louis  had  thought  it  pru- 
dent, and  his  advisers  also,  that  those  few  steps  should  be 
taken  between  the  palace  and  the  Parliament  House  that 
lay  beyond  the  palace  garden,  and  as  they  went  along  the 
broad  garden  way  between  the  formal  trees,  few  thought,  if 
any  thought,  that  those  few  minutes  in  the  privacy  of  their 
grounds  were  final.  Later,  all  called  it  the  beginning  or  the 
presage  of  defeat . 

The  King  walked  solidly  on  in  front  by  himself,  mur- 
muring from  time  to  time  that  the  leaves  had  begun  to 
fall  very  early  that  year.  The  Dauphin,  holding  the  Queen's 
hand,  trotted  by  her  side  and  amused  himself  by  pushing 
away  with  his  feet  those  same  dead  leaves,  until,  the  sickly 


/ 


436  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

little  chap  growing  weary,  a  Grenadier  of  the  Royal  Militia, 
which  formed  their  little  escort,  lifted  the  Prince  in  his  arms 
against  his  blue  coat.  The  Queen's  face,  mottled  red  and 
white  in  the  violence  she  did  herself  by  that  retreat,  was  now 
disfigured  by  tears,  and  the  crowd  beyond  the  palisades 
of  the  garden,  seeing  Royalty  thus  taking  refuge,  broke 
through  a  gate  and  made  a  hubbub  round  the  Parliament 
door.  But  a  couple  of  dozen  members  made  a  way  through 
them  and  met  the  royal  party,  assuring  them  of  an  asylum 
within.  With  some  little  pushing,  complaints,  and  speechi- 
fying, they  got  them  into  safety,  and  the  King  so  took  his 
place  beside  the  Speaker  in  that  great  oval  of  the  riding- 
school  in  the  early  but  hot  and  sunlit  morning,  the 
Queen  and  the  children  behind  him  upon  the  bench  of 
the  Ministers;  and  there  the  Grenadier  gently  put  down 
the  child. 

Vergniaud  was  in  the  chair,  and,  when  the  King  had 
spoken  his  few  words  to  the  Parliament,  it  was  Vergniaud 
who  assured  him  of  the  protection  of  the  laws.  But  there 
was  a  prejudice  too  strong  in  volume,  of  too  recent  a  date, 
and  too  lively  in  character,  to  permit  of  the  open  presence 
of  royalty  at  their  debates.  Royalty  must,  at  least  in  name, 
withdraw,  and  Louis  and  his  wife  and  the  children  and 
some  few  of  their  attendants,  consented  to  enter  a  little  box 
where  the  shorthand  reporters  of  a  certain  journal  had 
usually  their  place.  It  overlooked  the  hundreds  of  the 
Assembly  from  a  little  above  their  level,  and  was  so  placed 
at  th  esouth-eastern  corner  of  the  great  ellipse  that  the  sun, 
creeping  round,  was  bound  to  beat  upon  it  through  the  high- 
arched  southern  windows  as  the  day  wore  on.  The  grating 
was  removed,  they  were  attempting  some  repose  in  that 
strict  lodgment,  when  the  sudden  sound  that  all  so  tensely 


THE  TEMPLE  437 

awaited  broke  out  beyond  the  garden  trees.  The  firing  had 
begun.  It  was  a  little  after  nine. 

Cabined  as  they  were  within  the  little  box,  whose  outer 
wall  gave  upon  the  gardens  of  the  Palace,  they  could  hear, 
trembling  through  the  stone  and  noisy  through  the  open 
windows  on  that  hot  August  morning,  the  rattle  of  the  mus- 
ketry of  the  defence.  The  Marseillais  had  come  up  in  their 
turn;  they  had  come  into  the  courtyard.  They  had  par- 
leyed with  the  Swiss.  The  gentry  at  the  broad  windows 
of  the  first  floor,  each  group  twelve  front,  three  deep,  had 
opened  fire  to  stop  that  parleying.  But  of  what  so  passed 
the  Parliament  and  the  little  party  in  the  reporters'  box 
knew  nothing.  They  heard  but  one  discharge  of  cannon, 
booming  dull,  and  after  that  a  silence.  The  debate  in  the 
hall  of  the  Parliament  ceased.  It  was  the  moment  when 
the  Swiss  had  rallied  and  when  the  defenders  of  the  palace 
had  swept  the  populace  from  the  Carrousel,  and  had  so 
thought  to  have  ended  the  day.  There  were  many  in  that 
hall  who  thought  it  ended  also:  mobs  are  thus  often 
defeated  in  a  few  moments.  The  silence  lasted. 

Two  more  discharges  of  cannon  might  have  been  —  and 
were  perhaps  thought  to  be  in  the  anxious  house  and  by 
the  much  more  anxious  group  that  strained  their  ears  in  the 
reporters'  box  —  the  last  volley  against  a  flying  crowd. 
It  was  not  so :  these  cannon  were  the  two  pieces  of  Marseilles 
leading  a  return  of  the  mob,  and  thenceforward,  with  every 
moment  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  for  twenty  minutes,  the 
fusillade  and  the  roar  of  approaching  thousands  swelled  like 
the  calculated  swell  of  an  orchestra.  The  Queen  heard, 
where  she  sat  in  the  corner  of  the  tiny  lodge,  the  whistle  of 
grape,  the  thud  of  solid  shot  against  the  walls,  the  crash 
of  glass  and  all  that  increasing  roar  which  told  her  that  the 


438  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

populace  had  returned  like  a  tide,  flooding  the  courts  of 
the  palace  and  invading  its  very  doors.  For  some  very 
few  moments  they  heard  that  struggle  maintained. 

Then  it  was  that  Roederer,  rightly  or  wrongly,  a  lawyer, 
not  a  soldier,  determined  that  the  day  was  lost.  In  the 
spirit  which  had  made  him,  in  his  capacity  as  a  high  official 
of  the  Local  Government,  twice  advise  the  King  to  retire, 
and  the  second  time  succeed  in  that  advice,  in  that  same 
spirit  he  now  a^visei^ca^itulation.  Perhaps  he  hoped 
by  such  a  compromise  (could  it  arrive  in  time)  to  save  the 
Monarchy.  More  probably  he  deemed  the  Monarchy 
secure,  and  thought  only  by  this  capitulation  to  save  the 
House  in  which  the  Parliament  sat  and  in  which  the  Crown 
had  taken  refuge  from  direct  assault  by  the  mob.  At  any 
rate  there  was  written,  and  presumably  in  the  King's  pres- 
ence, the  hurried  word  or  two  which  ordered  the  Guard  to 
cease  firing,  and  that  scrap  of  paper  Louis  signed.1  It 
was  the  l^sLadLof  tho  FrencbJVIonarchy. 

This  order  was  conveyed  to  the  upright  and  soldierly 
D'Herville:  it  filled  him  with  contempt  and  anger.  He 
took  the  paper,  pocketed  it,  forced  his  way  round  with  dif- 
ficulty to  the  further  side  of  the  Tuileries,  saw  that  the  de- 
fence, though  now  beaten  back  to  the  very  doors,  was  still 
maintained,  and  so  far  from  communicating  the  King's  com- 
mand, determined,  as  many  a  soldier  before  has  done  in 
such  a  fix,  to  disobey.  He  continued  to  direct  the  battle. 

Though  the  populace  had  rushed  the  doors  and  in  part 
the  river  wing  of  the  palace,  a  furious  hand-to-hand  still 
raged.  The  staircase  was  not  yet  carried;  that  wing  of  the 
populace  which  had  leapt  the  gap  in  the  flooring  and  had 
boarded  the  Pavilion  de  Flore  from  the  Long  Gallery  had 

1  The  authenticity  of  this  document  is  discussed,  or  rather  alluded  to,  in  the  reproduction  of  it  which 
appears  as  a  frontispiece. 


THE  TEMPLE  439 

not  yet  fought  its  way  into  the  Tuileries.  The  great  body 
of  the  insurgents  was  still  massed  outside  in  the  square; 
a  steady  fire  was  still  maintained  upon  them  from  the 
windows  of  the  palace.  It  was  not  until  the  rooms  were  at 
last  flooded  by  the  advancing  mob  and  the  staircase  was  held, 
that  D'Herville  faltered.  He  was  turned.  The  assault  had 
begun  to  verge  upon  a  massacre.  Of  one-half  company  of  the 
popular  Militia,  all  but  five  had  been  hit  at  one  door  alone  in 
the  upper  rooms.  Before  the  main  door  within  a  few  yards 
of  it,  400  men  —  if  we  may  trust  those  who  most  desired  to 
hide  the  full  numbers  —  400  men  at  least  lay  heaped. 
Within,  the  mob  was  taking  its  revenge  and  the  sacking 
had  begun  before  D'Herville  showed  that  scrap  of 
paper  to  the  Guard.  This  second  command,  also,  the  Swiss 
obeyed,  as  they  had  obeyed  the  first  command  to  die.  ^ 

They  fell  back  out  of  the  palace  in  order,  this  remnant  of 
a  high  discipline;  they  passed  down  the  main  broad  avenue 
of  the  Gardens  steadily :  the  covering  volleys  of  their  retreat 
came  very  sharp  and  clear  just  outside  the  windows  of  the 
Parliament.  Those  within  heard  their  steady  tramp,  until 
at  last  that  tramp  turned  to  a  scuffle ;  there  were  crunchings 
upon  the  gravel,  confused  scrambles  upon  the  lawns,  choked 
cries  and  fugitive  running;  they  had  broken  by  the  round 
pond. 

Far  off  along  the  riverside  one  could  still  hear  a  rhythm 
and  a  tramp  of  men.  It  was  the  marching  of  the  Mar- 
seillese  with  their  prisoners:  for  they  had  made  prisoners 
and  disdained  to  massacre.  They  had  saved  somewhat 
more  than  a  company  of  the  Guard  and  bore  them  escort. 
The  fight  was  done. 

It  was  just  after  ten  o'clock.  In  those  two  hours,  or 
little  more,  of  doubt,  in  that  one  hour  of  combat,  there 


440  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

had  perished  many  thousands  of  men  and  the  tradition  of 
nine  hundred  years. 


The  day  passed  without  wind  or  air,  a  day  of  increasing 
clamour.  The  conquering  populace  entered  by  deputations, 
and  with  the  rhetoric  of  the  poor  and  of  their  leaders  before 
the  bar  of  the  manege.  They  demanded  and  obtained  the 
suspension  of  Louis  "till  the  National  Convention  should 
be  called."  They  brought  spoils  religiously  to  that  bar, 
"  lest  they  should  be  thought  thieves."  They  harangued  and 
they  declaimed  —  by  the  mouth  of  leaders. 

Far  off  in  the  chapel  of  the  palace  a  young  man  at  the 
organ  played  the  "Dies  Irse"  for  his  whim.  Those  who 
had  so  lately  been  the  masters  sat  huddled  in  the  box  of 
the  Logographe. 

If  the  modern  reader  would  have  some  conception  of 
it,  this  "loge"  of  the  shorthand  reporter,  let  him  think  if  he 
is  rich,  of  a  box  at  the  opera,  or,  if  he  is  poor,  of  a  cabin  upon 
a  steamer,  such  was  its  size. 

Louis  XVI.  and  one  or  two  of  his  armed  gentlemen,  the 
Queen,  the  little  children  and  their  governess,  sat  packed 
hour  after  hour  in  that  little  den;  through  the  torn  grating 
of  it  they  could  see  the  vast  oval  of  the  riding-school,  its 
sweep  of  benches  under  the  candle-light.  It  was  a  huge  pit 
from  whence  in  a  confusion  of  speech  and  clamour  rose  the 
smoke  of  their  fate. 

The  summer  night  had  been  so  tedious  and  so  burning 
that  in  their  ten-foot  square  of  a  hutch  the  refugees  had 
hardly  endured  it.  The  little  child  had  fallen  into  a  stupid 
sleep  upon  his  mother's  knees,  and  a  sweat  unnatural  to 
childhood  so  bathed  his  exhausted  face  that  the  Queen  would 


THE  TEMPLE  441 

not  let  it  remain.  She  turned  for  a  handkerchief  to  a  gentle- 
man of  theirs:  he  gave  her  his  —  but  there  was  the  blood  of 
a  wound  upon  it. 

Midnight  had  passed,  and  they  still  sat  thus  packed  and 
buried ;  before  them  still  rose  the  sonorous  cries  of  the  invad- 
ing mob,  the  interjections  of  the  Parliament,  the  rhetoric 
of  the  last  speeches.  The  hundreds  of  lights  still  flamed  in 
the  double  chandeliers  of  the  enormous  hall;  the  roof  and 
the  planks  of  the  half-empty  benches  around  the  arena  still 
sent  back  echoes. 

It  was  two  in  the  morning  before  the  doors  could  open  on 
them,  and  with  the  sweep  of  cooler  air  came  the  roar  of  the 
populace  still  on  guard  after  all  these  eighteen  hours.  The 
crowd  pressed  against  the  railings  as  a  strong  escort  hurried 
the  King  and  Queen  across  a  little  corner  of  the  gardens  to 
the  deserted  monastery  next  door.  There  were  large  candles 
thrust  into  the  barrels  of  chance  muskets:  the  night  was 
calm  and  they  could  burn.  By  that  faint  and  smoky  light, 
which  but  just  caught  the  faces  of  the  crowd  beyond,  they 
hurried  in  to  the  door  of  the  Feuillants. 

For  many  months  no  one  had  trodden  the  corridor  of 
the  place;  the  bricks  of  the  flooring  beneath  their  feet  lay 
unevenly.  The  blank  and  whitewashed  walls,  cracked  and 
neglected,  were  pierced  by  four  such  similar  little  doors  as 
monasteries  use  for  an  entrance  to  their  cells,  and  in  those 
four  bare  cells  the  Parliament  had  hurriedly  provided  what 
furniture  the  old  house  afforded. 

The  Dauphin  had  awakened  for  a  moment  in  the  fresh 
air,  and  had  smiled;  he  had  said,  so  that  those  near  could 
hear  him:  "I  am  to  sleep  in  mamma's  room  to-night!" 
His  mother  had  promised  it  him  as  a  reward  during 
the  dreadful  day;  he  slept  when  the  doors  closed  on 


442  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

them,  and  his  sister  slept  too.  The  Queen  was  too 
angry  for  repose. 

She  saw  the  monk's  bed  of  the  cell,  little  and  hard;  she 
saw  the  mouldy  green  paper  on  the  wall;  she  stamped  for 
one  last  futile  time  into  the  King's  presence  beyond  the 
partition  to  cry  that  things  should  surely  have  turned 
differently. 

"The  Marseillese  should  have  been  driven  back!" 

Louis  had  never  failed  to  meet  her  anger  when  it  rose,  by 
a  stolid  truth.  "Who  was  to  drive  them  back  ?"  he  said. 

Then  she,  who  had  not  understood  the  armed  nature  of 
the  struggle,  but  only  her  own  fierce  desire,  turned  back  and 
threw  herself  upon  the  narrow  bed  of  her  refuge. 

The  day  already  glimmered.  One  could  see  the  trees  of 
what  had  been  but  yesterday  her  royal  garden,  and  one  could 
see  the  palace  beyond  through  the  dirty  windows  of  the  little 
room.  The  sun  rose  and  showed  her  her  misery  more 
clearly.  She  could  not  sleep.  It  was  not  till  the  light  in 
the  east  had  risen  above  the  many  roofs  of  the  Tuileries 
and  had  already  thrown  a  slit  of  bright  shining  aslant  into 
the  room,  that  there  fell  upon  her  less  a  slumber  than  an 
unhappy  trance  of  exhaustion. 

There  was  silence  while  she  slept.  The  mob  had  gone 
home  exhausted.  The  carts,  which  had  worked  all  night 
round  the  palace  and  in  the  gardens  picking  up  the 
wounded  and  the  dead,  lumbered  no  more,  and  their  crunch- 
ing upon  the  gravel  of  the  alleys  had  ceased.  No  wheels 
rattled  in  the  Rue  St.  Honore  as  yet,  and  the  few  that  still 
maintained  the  sitting  in  the  Parliament  were  attended  by 
no  more  in  the  Tribunes  than  a  few  sleepy  beings  watching  to 
the  end.  Outside  in  the  still  air  all  that  could  be  heard 
was  the  early  piping  of  birds. 


THE  TEMPLE  443 

For  that  little  space  Marie  Antoinette  lay  broken  but 
forgetful  of  the  dreadful  day. 

Her  sister-in-law,  in  whom  self-sacrifice  was  permanent, 
watched  her  pitifully  so  lying  for  one  hour  and  another. 
Then  she  woke  the  children  and  dressed  them  for  the  new 
day,  silently,  so  as  to  spare  their  mother's  sleep,  but  that  sleep 
did  not  endure.  The  Queen  raised  herself  unrefreshed,  and, 
when  she  saw  the  children,  remembered  their  promise  and 
their  fall  and  said:  "It  will  all  end  with  us!  .  .  . 

With  the  morning  some  succour  began  to  arrive  from 
their  own  class,  who  pitied  them,  especially  from  foreigners. 
Lady  Gower's  little  son,  younger  than  the  Dauphin,  was  yet 
of  the  same  measure.  The  child  could  therefore  wear  the 
change  that  was  sent  him  from  the  English  Embassy.  The 
King  was  supplied  by  a  captain  of  his  Swiss,  a  man  as  cor- 
pulent as  himself.  The  Queen  could  get  linen  at  least  from 
the  Duchesse  de  Gramont.  Her  watch  and  purse  were  stolen , 
left  behind  or  lost,  but  there  was  plenty  of  money;  one  of 
her  women  had  no  less  than  twenty  pounds  upon  her:  there 
was  no  need  to  look  further. 

At  ten  an  escort  brought  that  broken  family  back  to  the 
reporters'  box.  And  so  daily  the  long  fatigue  was  endured 
and  the  mean  lodging  of  the  night.  All  the  Saturday,  all  the 
Sunday,  the  debates  continued  in  their  presence.  They  saw, 
they  half-understood  the  gn^rrpl  W^^g^jl^jrMty  which 
had  determined  to  be  master  of  their  persons,  and  the 
Parliament,  which  refused  to  forego  its  sovereignty.  They 
hearcfthe  decree  passed  that  overthrew  the  statues  of  the 
Kings  throughout  Paris.  They  heard  that  the  palace  of 
the  Luxembourg  was  to  be  their  sumptuous  prison;  then 
the  long  argument  against  that  building,  the  perpetual 
demand  of  the  city  for  their  custody;  the  suggestion 


444  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

of  this  place  and  that:  the  Archbishop's  palace  —  at 
last  the  Temple. 

They  saw  the  deputation  of  the  city,  with  the  Mayor  at 
its  head,  insisting;  they  heard  the  Parliament  give  way,  and 
knew  by  Sunday  evening,  tnat  Paris  would  hold  them 
hostages. 

On  the  morrow  —  a  fatal  13th  —  their  Court  was  removed 
from  them:  a  few  friends  only  were  allowed  to  remain. 
Under  the  wan  light  of  evening  two  great  carriages  —  still 
royal,  but  their  drivers'  livery  gone  and  a  dull  grey  replacing 
it  —  stood  before  the  door  of  the  Feuillants.  The  act  of 
imprisonment  had  begun. 

The  heavy  coaches  rolled  along  the  paving.  The  scene 
was  that  of  a  crowd  freed  from  labour  at  such  an  hour, 
thousands  on  either  side,  and  a  dense  escort  pushing  its 
armed  column  through.  The  sunset  and  the  long  twilight 
were  full  of  halts  and  summonses;  Petion,  with  his  head 
thrust  through  the  window,  was  insisting  on  a  way  for 
Authority :  there  was  a  noise  of  men  struggling,  sometimes 
to  see,  sometimes  to  save  their  feet,  snatches  of  songs, 
cries. 

The  distance  was  not  quite  a  mile  and  a  half.  For  over 
two  hours  the  coaches  pushed  and  fought  their  passage  up  to 
the  Place  Vendome,  where  the  statue  of  Louis  XIV.  lay 
fallen:  past  the  wide  boulevards  whose  width  did  nothing 
to  disperse  the  crowd :  down  at  last  along  the  narrow  lane  of 
the  Temple,  till  they  came  to  the  great  pillars  of  the  porch. 

All  this  while  the  Queen  sat  silent.  Her  husband  and 
she  and  her  royal  children  were  still  given  honour  —  sat  on 
the  front  seat  of  the  great  carriage ;  but  the  ladies  who  yet 
followed  the  Court,  the  governess  of  the  Children  of  France, 
were  indignant  that  Authority  should  have  passed  to  the 


THE   TOWER    OF   THE  TEMPLE   AT   THE   TIME   OF   THE 
ROYAL  FAMILY'S  IMPRISONMENT 


THE  TEMPLE  445 

officials,  and  that  these  should  sit  wearing  their  hats  of  office 
before  France-in -Person.  So  also  when  the  Royal  Family 
walked  across  the  courtyard  to  the  steps  of  what  had  once 
been  Artois'  Palace  of  the  Temple,  the  deputation  of  the 
Commune  there  present  to  receive  them  kept  their  heads 
covered  and  insisted  upon  their  new  authority,  calling  Louis 
"Sir,"  not  "Sire,"  and  preserving  in  his  sight  that  austere 
carriage  which  he  had  thought  the  peculiar  appanage  of 
kings. 

They  went  up  the  great  staircase,  lit  splendidly  as  for  a 
feast,  lit  as  it  had  been  for  Artois  in  the  days  she  so  well 
remembered:  the  doors  shut  as  upon  guests  assembled. 
They  followed  their  warders  down  a  short,  walled  way 
through  the  open  night,  and  saw  before  them  at  last,  with 
lamps  in  every  old  crochet  of  the  corners,  and  every  window 
ablaze,  the  enormous  mass  of  the  Tower. 


To  the  north  of  the  square  keep  which  was  the  main  out- 
line of  the  Tower,  a  second  building,  an  afterthought  of  the 
latter  Middle  Ages,  had  been  added.  It  leant  up  against  its 
larger  neighbour,  forming  a  kind  of  pent-house ;  its  four  storeys 
were  far  lower  than  those  of  the  stronghold — the  rooms  into 
which  each  storey  was  partitioned  were  necessarily  smaller 
and  less  convenient  than  those  which  they  were  to  occupy 
later  in  the  main  tower:  it  was  nevertheless  necessary  to 
lodge  them  here  for  the  first  few  weeks,  because  this  annex 
alone  was  furnished.  It  had  been  the  residence  of  the  Archi- 
vist in  charge;  its  main  room  had  been  his  drawing-room; 
the  whole  was  ready  for  an  immediate  occupation. 

To  these  Princesses  and  their  train  there  was  a  portentous 
novelty  in  such  a  place.  The  King,  a  man,  and  one  fond  of 


446  MARIE   ANTOINETTE 

hunting  in  all  weathers,  self-centred,  negligent  of  his  person, 
careless  of  any  luxury  save  that  of  the  table,  saw  nothing 
sharp  in  these  surroundings :  indeed,  his  sex,  especially  when 
it  is  leisured,  can  take  what  it  finds  in  a  campaign  or 
accident  with  no  great  shock.  But  the  women,  who  had  in 
every  moment  of  their  lives  been  moulded  by  magnificence 
and  ease,  could  not  understand  the  place  at  all.  Varennes 
had  been  a  hurly-burly;  the  wretched  three  days  just  ended 
at  the  Feuillants  a  violent  interlude ;  for  the  rest  their  pains 
and  terrors  of  the  past  three  years  had  been  played  upon  a 
gorgeous  scene.  They  had  slept  for  a  thousand  nights  of 
peril  in  very  soft  and  bulging  beds  whose  frames  were  thick 
with  gilding,  beds  whose  canopies  were  splendidly  high  and 
curtained  like  thrones.  They  had  been  surrounded  for  a 
thousand  days  of  peril  by  silent  servants  trained  and  dressed 
in  gorgeous  livery  for  their  work.  They  had  looked  out  on 
great  ordered  gardens,  and  had  walked  over  the  shining 
floors  of  the  palace.  That  was  their  protection:  a  habit 
of  grand  circumstance  and  continuous  exalted  experience 
against  which  the  occasional  horror  and  the  strain  of  their 
lives  could  make  no  impression. 

To-night,  in  the  unaccustomed  stillness  of  the  Temple 
enclosure,  they  sat  silent  in  the  knowledge  that  these  low 
roofs  and  common  walls  must  be  a  kind  of  home  for  them. 
All  was  at  first  insupportable;  the  King's  sister,  sleeping 
on  a  ground  floor,  in  a  room  which  once  the  cooks  of  the 
house  inhabited:  next  to  her  through  the  wall,  the  Guard 
Room ;  the  Queen,  the  royal  children  and  their  governess, 
cooped  up  in  a  couple  of  small  bedrooms  fifteen  feet  square 
or  less,  preparing  their  own  beds  and  the  Dauphin's,  were  in 
a  new,  worse  world.  The  poor  Princesse  de  Lamballe, 
with  her  own  great  virtue  of  fidelity  surviving  all  her  inani- 


THE  TEMPLE  447 

ties,  put  a  truckle  bed  for  herself  in  the  dark  little  passage 
between  the  two  rooms  and  slept  there,  as  a  dog  sleeps  at 
the  door  of  its  mistress.  Nor  did  even  this  society  endure. 
A  week  had  not  passed  when  the  officers  came  by  night  to 
read  a  new  decree,  and  to  separate  the  Duchesse  de  Tourzel 
and  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  from  their  masters,  saying: 
"There  must  be  no  one  here  but  Capetians."  Then  the 
complete  isolation  of  their  lives,  a  new  habit,  of  settled  hours 
and  monotonous  exactitude,  began. 

This  life  reflected  as  in  a  quiet  mirror  the  chaos  of  the 
enormous  struggle  which  was  being  fought  out  beyond  the 
walls  of  the  Temple.  They  were  prisoners  and  yet  unre- 
stricted ;  confined  by  public  authority  and  yet  permitted  the 
refinements  of  their  rank.  Surrounded  by  guardians,  but 
by  guardians  none  of  whom  as  yet  insulted  them,  many  of 
whom  were  secretly  their  friends,  some  few  their  devoted 
servants,  traitors  to  the  State  in  the  crisis  of  a  great  war  but 
traitors  through  devotion  to  a  national  tradition. 

Twenty  courses  at  a  meal  were  not  thought  too  many; 
a  dozen  servants,  paid  fantastic  salaries,  did  not  suffice 
them;  their  expenditure,  if  not  the  half-million  voted,  was 
yet  at  the  rate  of  many  thousands  a  year ;  the  doctor  and  the 
drawing  master  may  visit  them,  and  the  Duchesse  de  Gramont 
may  send  them  books.  Their  wine,  though  the  King  alone 
drank  it,  was  of  the  best,  commonly  champagne  (at  that 
time  not  the  fashionable  wine  of  the  rich,  but  rather  the 
ritual  of  feast  days) ;  they  had  good  furniture  at  their 
demand,  an  ample  library  of  many  hundred  volumes;  and 
in  general  such  comfort  as  such  a  situation  could  afford. 
But  a  violent  contrast  marked  their  lives,  the  contrast 
between  this  luxury  and  the  anarchy  of  manners  around 
them.  Their  guards,  often  gentlemen,  were  now  courteous, 


448  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

now  obsequious,  now  offensive,  according  as  chance  sent 
men  of  varying  politics  or  character  by  turn  to  be  on  duty 
at  the  Tower. 

The  alternate  fears  and  expectations  of  the  Revolution, 
the  doubtful  chances  of  the  frontier  battles,  the  unsettled 
quarrel  of  the  political  parties  among  the  conquerors  —  all 
these  permit  the  inconsistencies  of  that  moment  upon  the 
part  of  the  Commune  and  the  Parliament.  They  permit 
within  the  Tower  that  mixture  of  the  prison  and  the  home 
whereby  an  increasing  severity  of  rule  and  an  increasing 
vexation  did  not  forbid  the  costly  furniture,  the  very  com- 
plete library,  the  exquisite  cooking  which  make  up  the  curi- 
ous contrast  of  their  lives. 

The  order  of  their  day  was  simple  and  unchangeable. 
The  King  would  rise  at  six,  shave,  dress,  and  read  till  nine. 
The  Queen  and  the  Dauphin  were  up  by  eight,  at  which 
hour  the  servants  and  the  guard  came  into  the  rooms.  At 
nine  they  breakfasted.  During  the  morning  great  care  was 
taken  by  Louis  himself  with  the  lessons  of  the  boy.  The 
Queen  and  her  sister-in-law  dressed  for  the  day.  They 
walked  in  the  large  gardens  where  the  mob  from  far  off 
could  watch  them  from  behind  the  railings  of  the  Square; 
dined  at  two  o'clock,  played  cards.  The  King  would  sleep 
in  the  afternoon,  would  sup  again  at  nine,  and  read  till 
midnight. 

A  week  after  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe  and  the  Duchesse 
de  Tourzel  had  left  them,  before  the  end  of  August,  the  first 
of  the  indignities  offered  to  the  person  of  the  Monarch  came 
to  him  thus:  They  took  away  his  sword.  It  was  but  an 
ornament,  yet  in  all  that  long  line  of  ancestry  no  other  had 
had  his  sword  unclasped.  And  this  man,  who  could  never 
have  used  a  true  sword,  let  alone  that  toy,  felt  the  loss  like 


THE  TEMPLE  449 

a  wound.  Much  at  the  same  time,  that  is  before  the  end 
of  August,  entered  three  new  people  into  the  prison — Tison 
and  his  wife,  new  gaolers  who  had  to  act  as  spies  upon  them ; 
and  Clery,  who  was  to  act  as  the  valet  of  Louis,  who  was 
devoted  to  him,  and  who  has  left  us  what  is  certainly  the 
clearest  and  probably  the  most  accurate  account  of  theprison 
life  of  the  family. 

In  those  same  days  they  heard  whispered  to  them  by  one 
of  the  guards,  Hue,  the  first  news  they  had  had  upon  the 
matter  that  never  left  their  thoughts.  The  invasion  was 
successful.  Brunswick  was  well  on  his  way  —  it  was  impos- 
sible that  he  should  be  opposed. 

For  yet  another  week  no  incident  disturbed  the  common 
run  of  their  quiet;  the  physical  impressions  which  build 
up  most  of  life  were  neighbouring  and  small;  the  daily  noise 
of  hammering  in  the  great  tower  next  door  where  their  per- 
manent apartments  were  preparing;  and  the  daily  reading, 
the  daily  games  of  backgammon,  and,  daily,  the  sumptuous 
meals;  the  modest  dresses,  changed  (as  is  the  custom  of  the 
gentry)  for  the  evening;  the  daily  intercourse  with  such  two 
commissioners  from  the  City  Council  as  happened  to  be 
on  guard.  From  their  windows  they  could  see  the  rapid 
demolition  of  the  small  huddled  buildings  round  the  Tower, 
and  Palloy's  great  encircling  wall  rising  between  them  and 
liberty  on  every  side. 

But  beyond  these  exterior  things  their  minds  dwelt  con- 
tinually upon  the  matter  which  had  held  all  their  thoughts 
for  a  year.  They  remembered,  in  their  isolation,  the  fron- 
tier, the  Argonne  (which  is  a  wall),  and  beyond  it  the  bare 
plains  of  the  East:  moving  densely  over  these  the  convoys, 
the  guns,  and  the  packed  columns  of  the  invasion.  They 
had  failed  to  hold  their  Parisian  fortress  till  the  advent  of 


450  MARIE   ANTOINETTE 

that  slow  machine,  but  they  could  still  hope  serenely:  they 
had  known  regulars  since  their  childhood:  they  saw  in  the 
advance  of  Brunswick  something  inevitable;  they  were 
certain  of  this  success,  and  they  waited. 


How  truly  the  history  of  the  Revolution  is  the  history 
of  war  can  never  sufficiently  be  stamped  upon  the  mind 
of  the  student.  The  Terror  when  it  came  was,  as  I 
shall  call  it,  nothing  but  martial  law  established  during  a 
reign:  the  steps  by  which  the  fury  of  the  time  advanced 
towards  it  corresponded,  exactly  to  the  fortune  of  the 
TVpTTfjx  armies . 

Upon  the  2nd  of  September,  as  the  prisoners  walked 
in  the  garden,  they  heard  a  roar  throughout  the  city.  The 
populace  beyond  the  railings  threw  stones:  they  were  hur- 
ried back  into  their  prison.  For  a  moment  before  dusk 
they  saw  the  wild  and  fanatical  face  of  Mathieu,  once  a 
monk,  who  shouted  at  them:  "The  Emigres  have  taken 
Verdun,  but  if  we  perish  you  shall  perish  with  us."  In 
the  increasing  hubbub  all  around,  the  little  Dauphin 
cried  and  was  disturbed;  and  all  night  the  Queen 
could  not  sleep.  She  could  not  sleep  as  the  noise  rose 
and  roared  throughout  Paris.  ...  It  had  almost 
come.  The  armies  were  almost  here,  and  once  again  the 
dice  were  being  shaken  for  the  murder  of  the  prisoners,  or 
for  their  deliverance. 

It  was  on  that  day,  and  pricked  by  the  spur  of  such  news, 
that  Marat's  frenzied  committee  gathered  a  band,  and 
began  the  massacre  of  those  caught  in  the  public  prisons- 
all  those  suspect  of  complicity  with  the  invasion  and  of  the 
desire  to  help  the  foreigner  in  destroying  the  new  liberties 


THE  PRINCESSE  DE  LAMBALLE 

A  rough  miniature  preserved  at  the  Carnavalet 


THE  TEMPLE  451 

i  of  the  nation.  Among  these  hundreds,  roped  in  suddenly 
upon  suspicion  from  among  the  rich  or  the  reactionary  of 
the  older  world,  was  the  foolish,  tender  and  loyal  woman 
who  had  determined  to  share  the  fortunes  of  the  Queen  - 
the  Princesse  de  Lamballe.  When  they  had  taken  her  a 
fortnight  before  from  the  side  of  her  friend  she  had  but  been 
thrust  into  another  prison  to  await  these  days. 

The  3rd  of  September  broke  upon  the  captives,  a  dull 
uneasy  morning  in  which  the  clamour  of  distant  disturbance 
still  occasionally  reached  them  from  the  centre  of  the  city 
i  southward,  then  came  nearer. 

They  were  told  that  on  that  day  there  would  be  no  walk 

in  the  garden.     They  sat  therefore  all  the  morning  in  their 

rooms.     They  dined  as  was  their  custom;   their  dinner  was 

over,    it  was  not  quite  three  o'clock,  and  the  King  and 

the  guard  for  the  day  stood  together  at  one  of  the  great 

tunnel-like  windows  of  the  first  floor,  for  the  windows  were 

not  yet  blinded  as  they  later  were.     The  guard  by  his  side 

was  one  Danjou,  a  young  man  of  thirty-two,  very  eager  upon 

the  new  world  which  he  believed  to  be  then  arising;  full  of 

a  vision  of  freedom ;    a  good  sculptor  —  for  that  was  his 

business  —  intense   in   action,   he   was,    above   all,   brave. 

Energy  bubbled  out  of  him,  and  he  had,  what  goes  with 

i  energy,  a  clear  head  and  rapid  decision.    The  King  and  this 

man  stood  together  exchanging  that  kind  of  easy  conversa- 

I  tiori  which  Louis  had  by  this  time  learnt  to  hold  with  men 

i  of  every  rank.     They  were  watching  the  workmen  pull  down 

;  the  houses  near  by,  and  the  rising  of  the  wall  which  was  built 

\  to  enclose  the  gardens  of  the  Temple.    Now  and  then,  as  a 

great  beam  fell  with  its  great  clouds  of  dust,  the  honest  and 

i  slow  King  would  laugh  and  say:    "There  goes  another!" 

Their  conversation  was  on  this  level  when  they  heard  an 


452  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

increasing  noise  outside  the  gates.  To  the  Royal  Family 
it  meant  but  one  more  mob  rolling  by.  Danjou,  who 
was  a  free  man  fresh  from  outside  and  knew  better, 
was  silent  and  anxious:  he  was  aware  that  the  massacres 
had  begun. 

At  first  it  was  a  set  of  drunken  songs  far  off,  and  then  a 
clamour  in  the  streets.  At  last,  quite  close,  separate  cries 
and  loud  demands,  and  hammering  at  the  gates;  and  next 
a  nasty  crowd  burst  in.  They  were  not  very  numerous, 
but  they  were  drunk  and  mad  with  blood ;  and  they  dragged 
with  them  the  body  of  the  only  woman  killed  during  all 
those  horrors,  a  corpse  stripped,  perhaps  mutilated,  and 
separate  from  it  a  head  writh  powder  on  the  hair.  This 
head,  thrust  upon  a  pike,  some  of  the  foremost  raised  before 
the  window;  and  Louis,  slow  of  vision  though  he  was, 
recognised  it  for  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe.  His  wife  was 
at  the  table  behind  him.  The  window  was  high,  deep  and 
distant.  Louis  cried  suddenly,  "Prevent  the  Queen 
.  .  .  !"  But,  whether  she  had  seen  or  had  not  seen 
that  dreadful  thing,  the  Queen  had  fainted. 

Without,  Danjou,  acting  as  promptly  as  a  soldier,  was 
standing  on  the  steps,  giving  the  mob  all  the  words  that 
came  to  him  of  flattery,  rhetoric,  or  menace;  and  getting 
them  at  last  to  scramble  down  from  the  heaps  of  broken 
brick  and  rubble  they  occupied,  and  to  go,  taking  their 
trophy  with  them.  Within,  her  sister  and  her  husband 
attended  the  Queen. 

She  was  quite  broken  down.  The  night  fell,  but  again 
she  could  not  sleep.  She  passed  the  dark  hours  sobbing 
with  pain,  until  yet  another  day  had  dawned  upon  her. 
And  still  a  long  way  off  in  Paris  the  massacres  continued. 
Still,  through  the  first  week  of  September  and  the  second, 


THE  TEMPLE  453 

advanced  the  army  of  the  invaders  which  was  to  save  them 
as  it  came  victorious;  or  at  the  worst  it  came  at  least  to 
destroy  their  enemies  and  the  city  which  had  dared  to 
imprison  them. 

News  did  not  reach  the  prisoners  save  at  such  intervals, 
or  in  such  broken  whispers,  or  by  such  doubtful  signs  that 
they  could  make  little  of  it :  but  whether  they  knew  much  of 
that  news  or  little,  the  army  was  irresistibly  advancing: 
the  French  troops  which  were  to  oppose  it  were  increasingly 
falling  in  value :  the  passes  of  Argonne  were  forced  —  all 
but  one.  Dumouriez  was  turned;  and  by  the  20th  of 
September  Prussia  and  Austria  were  present,  armed, 
four  days'  march  from  the  gates;  and  there  was  no 
force  at  all  between  them  and  Paris.  That  same  day 
the  Parliament  in  Paris  met  the  menace  by  declaring 
the  Republic. 

Upon  the  morrow  the  most  extreme  of  the  extremists, 
Hebert,  the  cleanly  and  insane,  looked  in  to  mock  them 
coldly;  while  outside  the  booming  voice  of  Lubin  pro- 
claimed in  a  most  distinct  proclamation,  phrase  by  phrase, 
that  the  French  Monarchy  was  no  more.  The  King  went 
on  reading,  the  Queen  went  on  sewing;  for  such  was  the 
occupation  of  either  as  they  heard  those  words.  The  slow 
hours  of  the  equinox  passed  without  news  or  disturbance 
in  the  city;  but  meanwhile,  out  where  the  armies  were,  a 
prodigious  and  as  yet  unexplained  thing  had  happened. 
Austria  and  Prussia  and  the  Emigrants  had  failed.  The 
strong  cities  which  they  had  easily  taken,  the  passes  of 
Argonne  which  they  had  almost  as  easily  forced,  the  con- 
temptuous and  just  strategy  by  which  they  had  marched 
round  the  worthless  forces  of  the  National  Defence  and  now 
stood  between  it  and  Paris  —  all  these  by  some  miracle  of 


454  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

war  had  availed  them  nothing :   and  in  a  muddy  dip  before 
the  windmill  of  Valmy  the  whole  campaign  had  failed. 

I  wish  I  had  the  space  here  to  digress  into  some  account 
of  that  inexplicable  day.  I  know  the  place,  and  I  have  well 
comprehended  the  conditions  of  soil  and  of  gunnery  under 
which  the  Prussian  charge  failed  even  before  its  onset. 
Nor  could  any  study  more  engross,  nor  any  examination 
prove  more  conclusive,  than  an  analysis  of  the  few  hours  in 
which  this  accident  of  European  history  was  decided  upon 
the  ground  which,  centuries  before,  had  seen  Gaul,  and  there- 
fore Europe,  saved  from  Attila.  But  neither  the  limits  nor 
the  nature  of  my  subject  permit  me;  and  it  must  be  enough 
to  say  that  on  the  21st  of  September  at  Valmy,  a  few  yards 
from  the  road  whereby  the  King  had  fled  to  Varennes,  by 
the  failure  of  one  charge  the  invasion  failed.  In  a  few 
days  the  retreaLof  the  army  that  was  to  rescue  or  to  avenge 
the  King  and  the  Queen  had  begun;  and  from  that 
moment  the  nature  of  their  imprisonment  changed. 


Upon  the  29th  of  September  pens,  ink  and  paper  were 
taken  away  from  the  prisoners,  and  on  the  evening  of  the 
same  day  there  once  more  entered  the  cleanly  and  insane 
Hebert,  who  read  to  them  the  order  that  Louis  XVI.  should 
be  separated  from  his  family  and  imprisoned  in  another  set 
of  rooms  in  the  Tower. 

Those  relations  which  had  been  at  first  ridiculous,  later 
tolerated,  and  though  affectionate  not  deep,  between  the 
Queen  and  her  husband,  her  dislike  of  his  advances  towards 
the  Liberal  movement,  her  angry  amazement  at  his  patriot-*- 


THE  TEMPLE  455 

ism  in  the  early  days  of  the  revolt  —  all  these  which  are  too 
often  read  into  her  last  emotions  in  his  regard,  must  be 
in  part  forgotten  when  we  consider  how  they  all  lived 
together  behind  those  thick  walls.  Every  human  soul  that 
left  the  group  was  something  lost  to  them  forever.  Of  the 
two  that  had  last  left  them,  the  head  of  one,  shown  mur- 
dered, had  been  seen  at  the  window.  And  moreover,  this 
order  to  separate  the  King  meant  almost  certainly  some  form 
of  approaching  disaster.  The  children  also  were  a  bond. 
For  they  knew  nothing  of  whatever  early  phantasies,  what- 
ever recent  disagreements  there  had  been  between  the  wife 
and  the  husband,  and  they  must  now  have  their  father  hidden 
from  them. 

He  was  taken  away.  Upon  the  next  day,  the  30th,  as 
once  before  during  their  imprisonment,  the  Queen  refused 
to  eat  and  sat  silent.  To  that  silence  there  succeeded  a  fit 
of  violent  anger  in  which  she  screamed  at  the  guards.  It 
was  when  Clery  came  to  get  some  books  for  his  master. 

It  is  reported  that  Simon,  one  of  the  Municipals  who  was 
later  to  be  the  gaoler  of  her  child,  said  as  he  saw  the  distress 
of  the  women,  that  it  nearly  moved  him  to  tears,  and  that 
turning  to  the  Queen  he  told  her  that  she  had  had  no  tears 
when  the  palace  fought  the  people  upon  the  10th  of  August. 
It  is  said  that  the  Queen  answered:  'You  do  not  under- 
stand." And  when  he  added:  :<You  should  be  glad  at 
least  that  the  traitors  are  caught "  —  by  which  phrase  he 
meant  the  popular  vengeance  and  the  massacres  in  the 
prisons,  the  repulsion  of  the  invasion  and  the  rest  of  it  — 
the  Queen  would  not  answer  a  word. 

Upon  the  1st  of  November,  the  day  before  her  thirty- 
seventh  birthday,  she  saw  again  a  visitor  to  her  prison,  a  dark 
face  which  it  appalled  her  to  see:  it  was  a  face  stamped 


456  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

with  all  the  associations  of  Varennes.  It  was  the  face  of 
Drouet. 

He  spoke  to  her  as  a  deputy  from  the  Municipality  (to 
which  he  now  belonged) ,  to  ask  whether  she  had  anything  to 
complain  of.  She  resolutely  maintained  her  sullen  silence; 
she  turned  her  face  away  and  treated  him  as  though  he  were 
not  there,  and  he  on  his  part  threw  his  arms  up  in  a  gesture 
of  resignation,  then  bowed  to  her  and  went  out. 

The  royal  people  had  colds  in  November  and  waited 
through  a  shivering  month  what  could  not  but  be  the 
approach  of  some  very  evil  thing.  Upon  the  6th,  one  of  those 
scraps  of  news  —  positive  news  and  ill  —  which  reached 
them  like  patches  of  clear  light  in  the  midst  of  murky  fears 
and  rumours,  was  granted  to  the  prisoners.  The  Com- 
mittee of  Parliament  had  reported  upon  Louis'  case:  an 
indictment  was  framed;  he  would  certainly  be  tried. 

To  such  an  advance  of  misfortune  they  could  only  oppose 
the  fixed  hope  that  in  some  way  or  other  the  regular  armies  of 
the  Old  World  must  break  through.  They  had  been  checked 
at  Valmy,  nay,  they  had  retreated.  But  surely  they  could 
not  but  return,  and  brush  aside  at  last  the  raw  and  formless 
rags  of  the  French  volunteers.  They  could  not  but.  The 
old  regulated  armies,  the  peace  of  mind,  the  brilliant  uni- 
forms, the  vast  prestige  of  German  arms,  the  leadership  of 
gentlemen  —  sanity,  cleanliness,  and  the  approval  of 
educated  men  —  these  must  at  last  destroy  those  mere 
composite  mobs,  half  regulars,  half  levies,  half  sodden,  half 
mutinous,  ill-fed,  ill-clothed,  officered  as  best  might  be, 
untutored  and  untutorable,  which  their  gaolers  had  flung 
together  in  a  sort  of  delirium,  hotch-potch,  to  make  a  con- 
fused covering  against  the  governing  classes  of  Europe  who 
were  advancing  in  defence  of  all  the  decencies  of  this  world. 


THE  TEMPLE  457 

As  the  Royal  Family  so  hoped  against  hope,  that  ill- 
conditioned  crowd  —  old  soldiers  relaxed  in  discipline, 
young  enthusiasts  who  drank,  sickly  and  grumbling  vol- 
unteers, veterans  hoping  for  revenge  against  the  harsh 
experience  of  years  (a  dangerous  type),  company-officers 
of  a  week's  standing,  put  side  by  side  with  others  of  twenty 
years,  captains  in  boyhood  and  lieutenants  at  forty  — 
this  wrelter  was  jumbled  all  together  under  the  anxious  eye 
of  Dumouriez,  along  a  valley  of  the  frontier,  on  the  muddy 
banks  of  the  river  called  Hate  —  La  Haine. 

I  know  the  place :  low  banks  that  rise  in  the  distance  into 
hills  are  overlooked  far  up  stream  and  down  by  the  fantastic 
belfry  of  Mons  and  its  huge  church  dominating  the  plain. 
Dumouriez,  deeply  doubting  his  rabble  but  knowing  the 
temper  of  his  own  people,  poured  the  young  men  and  the 
old  across  the  line  of  the  river,  leading  them  with  the  Mar- 
seillaise. Among  the  villages  of  the  assaulted  line  Jemappes 
has  given  its  name  to  the  charge.  By  the  evening  of  that 
same  day,  the  6th  of  November,  the  Austrian  force  was 
destroyed,  a  third  of  its  men  lay  upon  the  field  or  had 
deserted,  the  rest  were  beating  off  in  a  pressed  retreat, 
eastward  and  away.  The  rabble  should  have  failed  and 
had  succeeded. 

I  have  said  that  for  Valmy  no  explanation  has  as  yet  been 
given.  For  Jemappes  there  are  many  explanations:  that 
the  Austrians  had  attempted  to  hold  too  long  a  strategic  line 
and  were  outnumbered  at  the  chief  tactical  point  of  the  battle : 
that  their  excellent  cavalry  (the  French  in  this  arm  were 
deplorable)  had  not  been  allowed  to  hold  their  left  long 
enough:  that  one  passage  of  the  river  was  accidental  and 
could  not  have  been  foreseen  (a  bad  commentary  on  any 
action!).  But  the  true  cause  of  that  temporary  yet  decisive 


458  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

achievement  was  to  be  found  in  two  forms  of  energy :  rapid- 
ity in  marching  and  in  the  handling  of  guns  —  but  such 
criticisms  do  not  concern  this  book.1 

Of  this  victory,  coincident  with  the  beginning  of  the 
King's  agony,  Marie  Antoinette  for  days  could  know  noth- 
ing, and  even  when  the  rumour  reached  her  it  was  but  the 
victorious  shouting  in  the  streets  and  a  name  or  two  whis- 
pered by  a  servant  that  gave  her  a  passing  impression  that 
her  champions  had  suffered  a  further  check  —  no  more. 
Yet  before  that  tide  should  flow  back  and  finally  swamp 
the  French  packed  in  Leipsic,  twenty  years  must  pass,  and 
not  till  then  should  the  Kings  and  the  lords  at  last  see  Paris 
from  a  hill. 

There  is  one  detail  in  connection  with  Jemappes  which 
the  reader  must  know  because  it  does  so  illustrate  the  myriad 
coincidences  of  the  Queen's  life. 

That  child  whom  she  had  seen  and  adopted  during  her 
early  childless  years,  when  her  fever  of  youth  and  exas- 
peration was  upon  her,  that  child  which  for  a  moment  had 
supplied  to  the  girl  something  of  maternity,  had  now 
grown  to  manhood.  The  birth  of  her  own  daughter  had 
long  ago  driven  out  any  recollection  of  the  whim:  the  peas- 
ant boy  of  St.  Michel  was  forgotten.  He  had  grown  into 
his  teens  full  of  the  bitterness  which  irresponsible  and  spas- 
modic patronage  can  so  vigorously  breed.  During  the  days 
of  October  he  had  been  recognised  among  the  wildest  of 
those  who  attacked  the  palace  in  Versailles ;  he  had  shouted 
for  the  Nation ;  he  had  enlisted  and  was  there  at  Jemappes, 
an  obscure  volunteer  among  the  thousands  whom  Du- 
mouriez  forced  forward  upon  the  frontier.  He  was  present 
upon  the  6th  of  November  upon  the  bank  of  the  Haine 

1  These  two  military  qualities  are  present  to-day  capitally  among  the  French,  and  may  at  any  moment 
reappear  in  the  discussions  of  modern  Europe. 


T 


^ff-u^^  , 


I     "^ 


t 


0*2 


/A 

v 


'   "  U- 


SANSON'S  LETTER 

Asking  the  authorities  what  steps  he  is  to  take  for  the  execution  of  the  King 


THE  TEMPLE  459 

when  the  mixed  battalions  charged,  singing:  a  bullet 
struck  him  and  he  fell  down  dead.  She,  the  Queen,  was 
there  a  prisoner  in  her  dimly  lit  room  at  night  —  separated 
from  the  father  of  the  children  who  slept  near  by :  her  mind 
was  big  with  the  new  doom  of  his  Indictment  and  Trial 
which  the  dull  day  had  brought  her.  Eighteen  years  before 
she  had  caught  up  that  peasant  baby  in  the  Louveciennes 
road  and  kissed  it,  her  eyes  full  of  tears,  and  in  her  heart 
a  violent  yearning  half -virginal,  half -maternal :  he,  however, 
lay  dead  that  same  night  in  the  Hainault  mud  with  the 
autumn  rain  upon  his  body:  his  name  was  Jacques  Amand. 


With  December  there  was  some  little  respite,  for  a  new 
Municipality  had  been  elected  that  was  a  trifle  more 
moderate  than  the  old,  but  in  general  this  life  of  hers  with 
its  calm,  its  dread  and  its  monotony,  continued.  Now  it 
contained  some  act  of  humiliation,  as  when  all  razors  and 
sharp-edged  things  were  taken  from  the  King  (upon  the 
7th) ,  now  some  indulgence,  as  when  (upon  the  9th)  a  clavecin 
was  allowed  the  Queen  —  and  it  is  said  that  from  curiosity 
she  played  upon  this,  later,  the  new  notes  of  the  Marseillaise. 

For  a  few  hours  the  Dauphin  was  taken  from  her.  It 
was  her  turn  to  ask  questions  of  the  guards,  and  theirs  to  be 
silent;  she  asked  distractedly:  they  did  not  reply:  but  the 
child  returned. 

The  affair  of  the  trial  proceeded  rapidly.  The  briefs 
were  gathered,  the  Kings'  counsel  met  the  King  day  after 
day  in  the  apartment  below,  and  she  stayed  above  there 
alone  with  her  children  and  was  still.  She  had  no  com- 
munications with  him  at  all  save  when  at  Christmas,  after 
he  had  drafted  his  will,  he  wrote  to  the  Convention  and 


460  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

caused  a  short  message  to  be  conveyed  to  the  Queen.  It  was 
perhaps  during  these  days  that  she  wrote  upon  a  fly-leaf 
which  is  still  preserved  in  St.  Germain,  "Oportet  unum  mori 
pro  populo." 

Louis,  as  the  new  year  broke,  saluted  it  sadly.  Within 
a  fortnight  he  had  been  pronounced  guilty  at  the  bar  of  the 
Parliament  before  which  he  was  arraigned  — guilty,  that  is, 
of  intrigue  with  the  foreigner  and  of  abetting  the  invasion. 
Upon  the  17th  of  January,  1793,  it  was  known  in  his  prison 
that  the  penalty  would  be  death.  Again  did  Marie  Antoinette 
hear  in  the  room  below  the  step  of  Malesherbes,  her  hus- 
band's counsel,  coming  upon  that  day  to  confer  with  the  King, 
but  this  time  he  came  to  speak  not  of  defence  but  of  death. 
A  respite  was  denied  to  Louis.  Upon  the  20th  his  prayer 
for  three  days  in  which  he  might  prepare  to  meet  God  was 
again  refused,  and  his  execution  was  fixed  for  the  morrow. 
His  sentence  was  read  to  him  in  his  prison:  he  heard  it 
quietly:  and  thus  upon  that  20th  of  January  (a  Sunday), 
a  murky  evening  and  cold,  when  it  was  quite  dark  the 
princesses  heard  in  the  street  a  newspaper-seller  crying  the 
news  that  the  King  must  die;  the  hollow  word  "Za  mort" 
very  deep  and  lugubrious,  repeated  and  repeated  in  the 
chanting  tones  of  that  trade,  floated  up  from  the  winter 
streets. 

It  was  eight  o'clock  when  they  were  told  that  they  might  go 
down  with  the  children  and  see  the  King. 

The  family  met  together  and  for  a  little  time  were  silent. 


The  spell  was  on  them  which  we  never  mention  —  one 

which  the  inmost  mind  refuses  —  I  mean  that  fear     .     .     . 

During  this  long  isolation  of  theirs  they  had  become 


n  \ 

/4-1V   n*,.       7 

0  / 


AUTOGRAPH    DEMAND    OF  LOUIS  XVI.  FOR  A  RESPITE  OF 
THREE  DAYS 


THE  TEMPLE  461 

very  fixed  upon  the  matter  of  the  Catholic  Faith,  but  that 
fear  pervaded  them  as  the  Church  has  said  that  it  must 
always  pervade  the  last  hours.  This  human  curse,  too 
sacred  for  rhetoric  and  too  bewildering  to  occupy  a  just  and 
reasonable  prose,  I  will  abandon,  content  only  to  have 
written  it  down  —  for  it  was  the  air  and  the  horror  of 
that  night. 

For  not  quite  two  hours  they  sat  together,  not  speaking 
much,  for  all  understood,  except  the  little  boy:  he  was  sad 
as  children  are,  up  to  the  usual  pitch  of  sadness,  for  any  loss 
great  or  small  which  they  do  not  understand:  he  saw  his 
own  sister,  a  child  older  than  he,  and  all  his  grown-up  elders 
thus  crushed,  and  he  also  was  full  of  his  little  sorrow.  He 
knew  at  least  that  his  father  was  going  away. 

The  King,  seated  with  his  wife  on  his  left  and 'his  sister 
at  his  right  hand,  drew  the  boy  towards  him  and  made  him 
stand  between  his  knees.  He  recited  to  him,  as  it  is  proper 
to  recite  to  children,  words  whose  simplicity  they  retain  but 
whose  full  purport  they  cannot  for  the  moment  understand. 
He  told  the  child  never  to  avenge  his  death,  and,  since  oaths 
are  more  sacred  than  repeated  words,  he  took  and  lifted  up 
his  small  right  hand.  Then,  knowing  that  the  will  of  the 
sufferer  alone  can  put  a  due  term  to  such  scenes,  he  rose. 
His  wife  he  pressed  to  his  shoulder.  She  caught  and  grasped 
to  her  body  her  little  children  —  to  hold  so  much  at  least  firm 
in  this  world  that  was  breaking  from  around  her.  She  knew 
that  Louis  desired  them  to  leave,  and  she  said,  after  she  had 
wildly  sworn  that  she  would  stay  all  night  and  the  children 
with  her  (which  he  would  not  have) : 

"Promise  that  you  will  see  us  again?" 

"I  will  see  you  in  the  morning,"  he  answered,  "before 

...     I  go.     At  eight." 


462  MARIE    ANTOINETTE 

"It  must  be  earlier,"  she  said,  not  yet  releasing  him. 

"It  shall  be  earlier,  by  half  an  hour." 

"Promise  me." 

He  repeated  his  promise,  and  the  two  women  turned  to 
the  great  oaken,  nail-studded  door;  helping  the  fainting 
girl,  and  taking  the  child  by  the  hand  they  went  out  to 
the  winding  stair  of  stone.  It  was  a  little  after  ten. 

When  the  iron  outer  door  had  shut  and  he  knew  the 
women  and  the  children  to  be  above,  out  of  hearing,  Louis 
turned  to  his  guards  and  gave  this  order,  that  in  spite  of  what 
he  had  said,  the  women  should  not  be  told  in  the  morning 
of  his  departure,  for  that  neither  he  nor  they  could  suffer  it. 

Then  he  went  into  the  turret  chamber  where  the  priest 
was,  and  said:  "Let  me  address  myself  to  the  unique 
affair." 

But  above,  from  the  room  whose  misery  could  just  be 
heard,  the  Queen,  when  she  had  put  her  boy  to  bed  and  kissed 
him  bitterly,  threw  herself  upon  her  own  bed  all  dressed, 
and  throughout  the  darkness  of  the  whole  night  long  her 
daughter  could  hear  her  shuddering  with  cold  and  anguish. 

That  night  there  was  a  murmur  all  around  the  Tower, 
for  very  many  in  Paris  were  watching,  and  through  the 
drizzling  mist  there  came,  hour  by  hour,  the  distant  rumble 
of  cannon,  and  the  sharp  cries  of  command,  and  men  march- 
ing by  companies  up  the  narrow  Temple  lane. 

It  was  the  very  January  dark,  barely  six  of  the  morning, 
when  a  guard  from  the  King's  room  came  up  the  stair. 
The  Queen  from  above  heard  him  coming.  Her  candle  was 
lit  —  her  fixed  gaze  expected  him.  ...  He  entered, 
but  as  he  spoke  her  heart  failed  her:  he  had  not  come  for 
the  summons,  he  had  but  come  for  the  King's  book 
of  prayers.  She  waited  the  full  hour  until  seven  struck  in 


I/ 


'  vx 

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9. 


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*  VI. 


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U.  ^ 


REPORT  OF  THE  COMMISSIONERS 

That  all  is  duly  arranged  for  the  burial  of  Louis  Capet 
after  his  execution 


THE  TEMPLE  4C3 

the  steeples  of  the  town,  and  the  pale  light  began  to  grow: 
she  waited  past  the  moment  of  her  husband's  promise,  till 
eight,  till  the  full  day  —  but  no  one  came.  Still  she  sat  on, 
not  knowing  what  might  not  have  come  between  to  delay 
their  meeting :  doors  opening  below,  steps  coming  and  going 
on  the  stairs,  held  all  her  mind.  But  no  one  sent  for  her,  no 
one  called  her.  It  was  nine  when  a  more  general  movement 
made  her  half  hope,  half  fear.  The  sound  of  that  movement, 
which  was  the  movement  of  many  men,  passed  downward 
to  the  first  stories,  to  the  ground,  and  was  lost.  An  emp- 
tiness fell  upon  the  Tower.  Then  she  knew  that  her  hope 
had  departed. 

For  a  moment  there  were  voices  in  the  courtyard,  the 
tramp  of  many  men  upon  the  damp  gravel,  the  creaking  of 
the  door,  more  distant  steps  in  the  garden,  and  the  wheels 
of  the  coach  far  away  at  the  outer  porch.  Then  the  confused 
noise  of  a  following  crowd  dwindling  westward  till  nothing 
remained  but  a  complete  silence  in  those  populous  streets, 
now  deserted  upon  so  great  a  public  occasion. 

For  yet  another  hour  the  silence  endured  unbroken :  ten 
o'clock  struck  amid  that  silence,  and  the  quarter.  .  .  . 
The  Queen  heard  through  the  shuttered  window  the  cu- 
rious and  dreadful  sound  of  a  crowd  that  roars  far  off,  and 
she  knew  that  the  thing  had  been  done. 

Life  returned  into  the  streets  beneath,  the  loud  shrill  call 
of  the  news-men,  crying  the  news  accursedly,  came  much 
too  shrill  and  too  distinct  against  the  walls.  All  day  long,  on 
to  the  early  closing  of  the  darkness,  the  mists  gathered  and 
lay  thick  over  Paris  and  around  her  high  abandoned  place. 


XVIII 
THE  HOSTAGE 

FROM  THE  21sT  OF  JANUARY,  1793,  TO  THREE  IN  THE  MORNING  OF 
THE  2ND  OF  AUGUST,  1793 

THAT  night  the  prisoners  in  the  Tower  did  not  sleep, 
saving  the  little  Dauphin :  he  slept  soundly ;  and  it 
is  said  of  his  mother,  that,  watching  him,  she  mur- 
mured that  he  was  of  the  age  at  which  his  brother  had  died, 
at  Meudon,  and  that  those  of  her  family  who  died  earliest 
were  the  most  blessed.     In  the  last  silences  of  the  January 
night,  till  past  two  in  the  morning,  the  woman  Tison,  who 
was  in  part  their  gaoleress  and  in  part  a  spy  upon  them, 
heard  them  talking  still,  and  when  she  came  to  them  Madame 
Elizabeth  said:   "For  God's  sake  leave  us." 

Clery,  the  dead  master's  valet,  was  taken  away,  still  noting 
as  he  went  the  new  look  in  the  Queen's  eyes.  And  in  this 
same  week  there  came  the  mourning  clothes  which  they  had 
asked  of  the  authorities  and  which  had  been  granted  them. 
The  Princess  Royal  fell  ill.  The  Queen  would  no  longer  walk 
in  the  garden  now,  and  the  child,  lacking  exercise  —  and 
with  bad  blood  —  suffered.  Her  legs  swelled  badly.  The 
authorities  allowed  the  man  who  had  been  the  family  doctor 
of  the  children  in  the  old  days  to  come  and  visit  them  now. 
Brunier  was  his  name,  and  in  the  old  days  Marie  Antoinette 
had  affected  to  ridicule  his  middle-class  energy :  she  thought 
he  lacked  respect  to  the  clay  of  which  she  and  her  children 
were  made.  She  was  glad  enough  to  see  him  now,  and  he 

464 


tJ'C.  Jt  fibuLtt*  *&  tv*4  tmti.  ttftt*  n&AVt-rtd  Jt*< 
rn*u*  ji'l  tie  M*iftt*vty.J&*+'(tA  Atl^*'"^  14  I*  H^ 

FIRST  PAGE  OF  LOUIS  XVI.'S  WILL 


. 


THE  HOSTAGE  465 

was  devoted.  He  was  allowed  to  call  in  a  surgeon  and  to 
bring  in  linen.  Nor  was  he  their  only  communication  with 
the  external  world,  for  though  the  sound  and  the  news  of  it 
did  not  reach  them,  yet  they  were  not,  as  modern  prisoners 
are,  denied  companionship.  Upon  the  pretext  or  with  the 
real  excuse  that  the  mourning  clothes  did  not  fit,  a  dress- 
maker whom  they  had  known  was  allowed  in;  and  in  general, 
as  will  be  seen  in  a  moment,  there  were  methods  of  com- 
munication between  them  and  those  who  desired  to  know 
every  moment  of  their  captivity  and  every  accident  of  their 
fate.  From  the  close  of  January  onward  into  the  summer, 
five  months,  it  is  possible  to  establish  no  precise  chronology 
of  their  actions,  but  it  is  possible  to  decide  the  general  tenor 
of  their  lives :  save  in  one  particular,  which  is  that  we  can- 
not determine  to-day  what  exactly  were  the  relations 
between  the  Queen  and  those  who  would  rescue  her  or 
who  could  give  her  news  of  the  outer  world  —  especially 
Fersen. 

We  have  of  course  several  accounts  furnished  by  eye- 
witnesses, notably  the  account  of  Turgy,  who  was  their  sole 
servant  in  their  prison ;  but  these  accounts,  and  that  account 
especially,  are  tinged  with  the  quite  obvious  atmosphere  of 
the  Restoration.  Quite  poor  people,  writing  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  a  powerful  government  at  a  time  when  every 
laudatory  or  jjluminating  detail  upon  the  imprisonment  of 
the  royal  family  had  its  high  money  value,  must,  however 
honest,  be  somewhat  suspect.  For  the  most  honest  man  or 
woman  the  conditions  of  the  Restoration  were  such  that 
there  would  be  an  inevitable  tendency  to  exaggeration;  and 
we  have  no  evidence  available  of  the  exact  characters  of 
the  witnesses.  Still  the  witnesses  are  witnesses,  and  though 
an  elaborate  code  of  signals  (which  some  of  them  pretend) 


466  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

probably  did  not  exist,  yet  we  know  both  from  Fersen  him- 
self and  from  the  way  in  which  affairs  were  conducted  on 
either  side,  that  not  a  little  communication  was  established 
between  the  widowed  Queen  and  the  Royalists  outside.  To 
more  than  that  general  statement  no  historian  can  commit 
himself,  unless  he  be  one  of  those  belated  university  types 
wrho  will  trust  a  printed  or  a  written  document  beyond  their 
common  sense. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  during  the  first  two  months 
after  the  death  of  the  King,  that  is,  during  all  February  and 
March,  1793,  the  exalted  and  the  noble  minds  of  the  Gironde 
were  still  at  the  head  of  that  executive  power  which  is  in 
France  (since  the  French  have  no  aristocracy)  the  whole  of 
government.  Nay,  they  remained  technically  the  heads  of 
the  Executive  until  the  end  of  May,  1793,  though  their 
power  was  touched  by  the  establishment  of  the  Revolution- 
ary Tribunal  on  the  proposal  of  the  Radicals  in  March,  and 
undermined  by  the  establishment  of  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  on  the  proposal  of  Danton  in  early  April. 

The  Giiondins  and  the  Municipality  of  Paris  were  at 
odds.  The  Municipality  itself  was  not  homogeneous. 

The  guarding  of  the  Queen,  which  was  the  business 
of  the  Municipality,  was  not  uniform.  The  Municipality 
had  to  choose  many  men  to  relieve  each  other  in  relays ;  and 
of  these,  two,  Toulan  and  Lepitre,  tended,  at  least  after  a 
little  experience  of  their  prisoners,  to  show  them  sympathy. 
One  of  their  officers,  Michonis,  did  more,  and  would  have 
saved  her. 

From  time  to  time  a  newspaper  would  be  smuggled  in  to 
these  princesses;  it  is  said  that  music  played  from  a  window 
whence  they  could  hear  it,  conveyed  signals,  and  at  any  rate 
it  is  certain  that  Fersen  had  some  news  of  them. 


THE  HOSTAGE  467 

Now  Fersen  at  this  moment,  in  early  February  that  is, 
bad  as  his  judgment  of  French  affairs  was,  appreciated  their 
situation  in  a  phrase.  He  called  the  Queen  "a  hostage," 
and  this  describes  very  accurately  the  meaning  of  her 
captivity. 

I  repeat,  no  one  can  understand  the  Revolution  who  does 
not  treat  it  as  a  military  thing,  and  no  one  can  understand 
military  affairs  who  imagines  them  to  be  an  anarchy.  Of 
necessity  a  brain  directs  them,  for  if  in  military  affairs  a 
plan  be  lacking,  the  weakest  opposing  plan  can  always 
conquer.  It  was  not  cruelty  nor  love  of  vengeance  that 
dominated  the  position  of  the  prisoners.  They  were  an 
asset. 

But  though  their  value  was  recognised  and  their  imprison- 
ment was  part  of  a  diplomatic  arrangement,  yet  there  were 
different  policies  regarded  them.  The  Radicals,  the 
Mountain,  were  at  once  the  most  enthusiastic  and  the  most 
practical  of  the  Revolutionary  groups.  They  were  not  in 
power,  they  had  not  a  permanent  majority  in  the  Parliament 
though  they  had  Paris  behind  them;  but  they  saw  clearly 
that  France  was  in  to  win :  they  saw  clearly  (first  Danton, 
then  in  succession  to  him  Carnot)  that  every  general  action 
lost,  every  fortress  in  a  chain  surrendered,  was  the  approach 
not  of  some  neutral  or  balancing  arrangement,  but  of  a  full, 
complete  and  ruthless  reaction  in  Europe  without  and  in 
France  within.  It  had  come  to  winning  all  or  losing  all. 
The  nohkrJjinHidin  blood  that  still  controlled  the  Republic, 
knew  too  little  of  the  vices  of  men  to  follow  that  calculation. 
The  Girondins  still  believed  that  in  some  mystic  way  the 
steady  adherence  to  the  Hfpnhlinfl^  I^Q!  —  the  volunteer 
soldier  as  against  the  conscript,  the  citizen  controlling  the 
soldier,  the  locality  governing  itself  — man  absolute  —  was 


468  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  thing  so  high  that  no  human  circumstance  could  wound  it. 
They  thought  it  bound  to  survive  through  some  force 
inherent  in  justice. 

Within  three  weeks  of  the  execution  of  Louis  all  Europe 
was  banded  against  the  Republic,  and  one  may  say,  morally, 
all  the  Christian  wrorld,  for  even  the  distant  and  ill-informed 
Colonials  of  Philadelphia  and  Virginia  had  recoiled  ner- 
vously at  the  news  of  a  king's  execution.  The  pressure  of 
that  general  war  againstJIi&Ji£public  was  to  give,  by  what 
fools  call  the  logic  of  events,  a  most  powerful  aid  to  the 
practical  and  savage  determination  of  the  Mountain :  it  was 
to  squeeze  to  death  the  idealism  ofthe  Girondins. 

While  yet  these  last  were  in  power  there  were  plots  for 
the  escape  of  the  prisoners,  plots  which  failed;  and  their 
treatment,  even  in  minor  details  (as  the  allowing  them  to 
take  their  own  form  of  exercise  and  the  leaving  of  them  as 
much  as  possible  alone)  was  easy.  Little  objects  left  by 
the  King  were  conveyed  to  the  Queen  from  the  upper  room, 
and  Jar  jay  es,  a  friend,  saw  that  they  reached  the  King's 
brothers.  Had  the  impossible  attempt  of  the  Girondins 
performed  the  miracle  which  they  who  had  called  on  this 
miraculous  war  demanded,  had  the  patchy  volunteer  forces 
of  the  French  found  it  possible  to  conquer  in  those  early 
months  of  '93,  the  treatment  of  the  prisoners  would  have 
gone  from  better  to  better;  their  release  by  negotiation 
would  soon  have  arrived,  if  not  by  negotiation  then  from 
mere  mercy.  This  same  Jarjayes,  who  had  been  Marshal 
of  the  camp  and  was  husband  to  one  of  the  Queen's 
women,  found  things  so  easy  that  he  could  weave  a  definite 
plot  for  the  escape  of  the  royal  prisoners.  WTiy  it  failed  we 
do  not  know,  though  of  course  the  Royalist  evidence  we 
have  ascribes  it  to  a  special  virtue  in  the  Queen,  who  refused 


THE  HOSTAGE  469 

to  be  separated  from  her  children.  In  the  first  week  of 
March  the  first  plan  failed,  on  account  of  a  violent  reaction 
towards  severity  on  the  part  of  the  authorities  following 
the  first  military  reverses  in  the  Netherlands.  The 
second  is  better  attested,  and  there  is  here  a  sufficient  con- 
currence of  witnesses  to  believe  that  some  hesitation  of  the 
Queen's  did  cause  its  final  failure.  She  would  have  had  to 
flee  alone,  and  it  is  on  the  whole  just  to  decide  that  she 
refused;  for  we  have  it  on  the  authority  of  a  fairly  honest 
man  that  the  Princess  Royal  had  some  memory  of  this 
incident  of  her  childhood  and  had  spoken  to  him  on  it, 
while  Chauveau-Lagarde  (who  was  later  the  Queen's  coun- 
sel during  her  trial)  has  left  a  copy  of  a  note  of  hers  saying 
that  she  would  not  fly  alone  without  her  children.  Of  other 
supposed  communications  between  her  and  Jarjayes  we  have 
only  his  copy  of  her  writing.1  At  any  rate,  with  the  last 
days  of  March  all  this  early  phase  of  the  Queen's  widowed 
captivity  comes  to  an  end.  Dumouriez  and  the  French 
armies  lost  the  great  and  decisive  action  of  Neerwinden 
upon  the  18th  of  the  month,  and  in  the  last  week  of  it, 
though  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  was  not  yet  formed 
to  establish  martial  law  throughout  the  Republic  and  to 
save  the  State,  yet  new 


The  woman  Tison  and  her  husband  —  half  the  gaolers, 
half  the  spies  of  the  family,  as  I  have  said  —  were  not 
permitted  to  leave  the  Tower  of  the  Temple.  Pencils  were 
forbidden.  Upon  the  25th  of  March  a  chimney  fire  was 

*  I  can  but  pay  little  attention  to  evidence  of  that  kind.  In  the  case  of  Fersen  there  are  reasons  for  his 
destroying  the  originals  :  he  was  the  recipient  of  her  passionate  affections.  Moreover,  we  know  his  nature  well: 
he  had  all  the  Northern  simplicity,  and  with  that  intense  passion  of  his,  he  would  have  thought  it  sacrilege  to 
ascribe  a  single  word  to  her  that  she  had  not  written,  or  to  make  fiction  out  of  her  beloved  soul.  Moreover, 
he  cared  little  whether  posterity  knew  or  did  not  know  the  things  he  chose  to  bequeath  to  his  heirs.  In  the 
case  of  inferior  men  with  an  obvious  axe  to  grind,  and  proud,  whatever  their  loyalty,  to  be  intermediaries 
between  the  Hostage  and  her  rescuers,  the  evidence  of  mere  copies  which  they  alone  can  certify  is  of  very 
little  value. 


470  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  pretext  for  the  appearance  of  Chaumett  coming  from  the 
Commune  of  Paris.  He  returned  the  next  day  with  the 
Mayor  Pache,  and  with  Santerre,  the  man  of  the  fall  of  the 
Bastille,  the  rich  leader  of  the  popular  militia;  in  those  same 
hours  Dumouriez  at  the  head  of  the  defeated  French  Army 
was  receiving  the  general  of  the  Austrian  forces  and  nego- 
tiating treason.  He  was  about  to  join  hands  with  the 
enemy  and  to  propose  a  march  on  Paris.  The  first  demand 
for  the  Queen's  trial  was  made  — by  Robespierre:  a  week 
and  Dumouriez'  treason  was  accomplished:  the  chief 
general  of  the  Republic  had  despaired  of  France  and  had 
gone  over  to  the  Austrian  camp  with  the  design  of  marching 
on  Paris,  and  at  least  restoring  order;  his  army  had  refused 
to  follow  him,  but  the  shock  was  enormous.  Paris  won ; 
the  Gjrondjris  lost.  The  Committee  of  Public  Safety  was 
established.  The  Terror  was  born;  and  the  Revolution, 
acting  under  martial  law,  went  forward  to  loose  everything 
at  once  or  to  survive  by  despotism  and 'by  arms. 


Thence  onward  Marie  Antoinette's  imprisonment  becomes 
another  matter.  On  the  20th  of  April  there  came  into  her 
prison  men  whose  tone  and  manner  would  never  have  been 
allowed  before:  the  chief  of  the  "  Madmen,"  as  the  populace 
called  them,  the  intense  Republicans  who  would  believe  any- 
thing of  a  Bourbon,  Hebert,  came  into  the  prison.  He  came 
at  night.  By  coincidence  or  by  design  her  terrors  for  the 
future  were  to  be  terrors  of  the  night.  It  was  near  eleven 
when  his  dandyr  meagre  figure  and  thin,  pointed  face 
appeared  to  terrify  her,  and  for  five  hours  the  whole  place 
was  searched  and  ransacked.  Her  little  son,  already  ailing, 
she  had  to  lift  from  his  bed  while  they  felt  the  mattress  and 


THE  HOSTAGE  471 

the  very  walls  to  see  what  might  be  hidden.     They  took 
from  Madame  Elizabeth  her  stick  of  sealing-wax,  her  pencil 

—  which  had  no.  lead  to  it  —  and  they  took  with  them  a 
little  scapular  of  the  Sacred  Heart  and  a  prayer  for  France 

—  but  the  France  for  which  the  princesses  had  this  written 
prayer  was  not  the  nation. 

On  the  23rd  they  came  again  and  found  nothing 
but  an  old  hat  of  the  King's,  which  his  sister  kept  as  a  sort 
of  relic  and  had  put  under  her  bed.  It  was  taken  for 
granted  (and  justly)  that  communication  had  been  estab- 
lished between  the  prisoners  and  the  kings  outside.  A 
denunciation  of  Lepitre,  Toulan  and  the  rest,  failed,  but 
Toulan  and  Lepitre  were  struck  off  the  list  of  guards. 

With  the  end  of  May  the  populace,  supported  and  per- 
mitted by  the  new  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  conquered 
the  Moderate  majority,  and  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  was  left  without  rivals;  it  began  from  that 
moment  to  direct  the  war  with  the  leonine  courage  and 
ferocity,  the  new  and  transcendent  intelligence,  the  ruth- 
less French  lucidity  which  ultimately  at  Wattignies  saved 
the  State. 

Upon  the  victory  of  Paris  and  the  Mountain  the  destruct- 
ion of  the  Moderates,  the  establishment  of  martial  law,  the 
despotism  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  came  the  last 
phase  of  the  Queen's  imprisonment  —  and  with  it,  by  a 
most  evil  coincidence  or  portent,  the  growing  illness  of  the 
little  heir,  her  son.  Sharp  pains  in  his  side,  convulsions,  the 
doctor  sent  for  in  the  early  part  of  May,  and  again  toward 
its  end,  and  again  in  June,  things  going  from  bad  to  worse 
with  him. 

To  these  prisoners,  shut  away  from  men,  the  movement 
of  that  world  was  unknown.  They  only  knew  that  some- 


472  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

thing  was  surging  all  round  the  thick,  obliterating,  impene- 
trable walls  of  their  tower.1  On  the  day  when  the  populace 
conquered  the  Girondins,  all  they  knew  was  that  they  were 
not  allowed  even  upon  the  roor,  from  which,  upon  most  days 
for  some  hour  or  so,  they  might  take  the  air  and  look  down 
upon  the  slates  of  revolutionary  Paris  far  below,  and  dur- 
ing June  when  the  new  power  of  the  Committee  and  of 
martial  law,  of  the  Terror,  of  the  determination  of  the  Rev- 
olution, of  the  city,  was  fixing  itself  firmly  in  the  saddle, 
they  knew  nothing  of  what  was  passing,  save  perhaps  from 
a  growing  insolence  in  their  guards. 

In  that  same  month  yet  another  plot  for  their  escape 
failed.  It  depended  upon  two  men;  the  one  a  certain  Batz, 
on  whom  our  information  is  most  confused  and  our  evidence 
most  doubtful,  as  indeed  his  own  character  and  his  own 
memories  were  doubtful  and  confused  (he  was  a  sort  of 
enthusiast  who  had  already  attempted  many  impossible 
things) ;  the  other,  a  character  quite  clearly  comprehended, 
one  Michonis.  Batz  was  a  kind  of  baron;  Michonis  was, 
like  Toulan  and  Lepitre,  of  the  Municipality  and  had  regu- 
lar authority.  He  will  be  seen  again  in  the  last  plot  to 
save  the  Queen.  Of  whatever  nature  was  this  uncertain 
attempt,  it  also  failed.  Shortly  after  the  woman  Tison 
diversified  their  lives  by  going  mad  with  great  suddenness 
and  suffering  a  fit.  She  was  removed,  and  the  incident 
is  only  of  note  because  certain  pamphleteers  have  called 
it  a  judgment  of  God.  Yet  her  wage  was  small. 

Upon  the  day  after  that  unusual  accident,  the  growing 
suspicion  of  the  popular  party  against  what  was  left  of 
Moderate  administration  in  Government  broke  out  in  a 
furious  denunciation  of  actual  and  supposed  conspiracies. 

1  The  w^lls,  to  be  accurate,  were  nine  feet  thick,  and  the  windows  were  like  tunnels. 


THE  HOSTAGE  473 

It  was  feared  that  the  great  mass  of  suspects  now  gathered 
into  the  prisons  possessed  some  engine  for  revolt.  An 
extreme  policy  in  diplomacy  and  in  arms,  as  in  internal 
government,  finally  prevailed,  and  with  the  1st  of  July 
this  ardent  severity  took  the  form  of  a  decree,  passed  in  the 
now  enfeebled  and  captured  Parliament,  that  the  Dauphin 
—  the  greatest  asset  of  all  —  should  be  separated  from  his 
mother  and  put,  though  in  the  same  building,  under  a 
different  guard. 


It  is  not  to  be  imagined  that  so  large  a  transformation 
of  policy  between  the  execution  of  the  King  and  the  decree 
for  the  separation  of  the  Dauphin  had,  in  any  part  of  it,  a 
mainspring  other  than  the  war.  I  have  said  that  the  steps 
of  the  spring,  the  destruction  of  the  Gironde  by  the 
Mountain,  the  capture  by  Paris  of  the  Pa.rlia.ment.  were 
but  the  efiWts  of  the  collapse  of  the  volnntppr  mah  at 
Neerwinden,  the  treason  of  Dumouriez  and  the  new  — 
and  necessary  —  martial  law  that  henceforward  bound 
the  Republic.  All  the  last  rigours  of  the  imprisonment 
depended  upon  the  same  catastrophe. 

The  enemy  that  had  been  .checked  at  Valmy,  had  been 
attacked  in  the  winter  but  half -prepared,  the  enemy  that 
had  suffered  the  French  gallop  to  overwhelm  the  Nether- 
lands and  to  occupy  Mayence  —  was  returning.  The 
Republicans  were  out  of  Belgium,  the  armies  of  the  Kings 
were  flooding  back  upon  the  Rhine.  The  Rhine  and  Alsace 
depended  upon  two  things,  Mayence  and,  behind  it,  shield- 
.  ing  Alsace,  the  lines  of  Weissembourg  that  stretched  from 
the  river  to  the  Mountains.  Mayence  was  to  fall,  the  lines 
of  Weissembourg  were  to  be  pierced.  As  for  the  Belgic 


474  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

frontier,  there  a  line  of  fortresses  could  check  for  a  moment 
the  advance  of  the  Allies  —  for  the  French  fortify :  they  are 
in  this  the  heirs  of  Rome;  and  whenever  they  suffer  defeat 
the  theory  of  fortification  is  belittled;  in  their  resurrection 
of  military  power  the  spade  goes  forward,  borne  upon  the 
shoulders  of  Gaul. 

In  this  July  of  1793  the  Belgic  frontier  only  perillously 
held.  The  sieges  were  at  hand  and  the  fall  of  the  frontier 
strongholds  was  at  hand.  These  once  conquered,  it  was 
proposed  by  Austria,  Prussia  and  England  to  dismember 
the  territory  of  the  Republic.  To  all  this  I  will  return. 

It  was  upon  the  1st  of  July,  with  the  enemy  advanc- 
ing, that  it  was  proposed  to  take  the  Dauphin  from 
the  Queen. 

Upon  the  evening  of  the  3rd  the  order  was  executed. 

It  was  but  just  dark  when  the  guard  challenged  a  patrol 
at  the  gate  of  the  Tower;  the  patrol  was  the  escort  of 
six  Municipals  who  had  come  from  the  authorities  of  the 
city  to  take  the  person  of  the  child. 

The  women  within  the  prison  had  had  no  warning. 
The  same  fate  which  had  been  kind  to  them  in  making 
a  silence  all  around  their  lives  during  these  dreadful  months 
and  in  hiding  from  them  the  dangers  that  rose  around  was 
cruel  to  them  now,  leaving  them  unprepared  for  this  sud- 
den and  tearing  wound.  There  was  a  candle  in  the  room 
and  by  its  light  the  little  girl,  the  Princess  Royal,  read  out 
aloud  —  from  a  book  of  Prayers  it  is  said  —  to  her  aunt 
and  her  mother,  the  Queen.  These  two  women  sewed  as 
they  listened;  they  were  mending  the  clothes  of  the  children. 
The  little  boy  slept  in  his  bed  in  the  same  room :  his  mother 
had  hung  a  shawl  to  hide  the  light  from  his  eyes.  Save  for 


.  ,, 

^j^ 

~ 


J 


ORDER  OF  THE    COMMITTEE  OF  PUBLIC  SAFETY 

In  Cambon's  handwriting,  directing  the  Dauphin  to  be  separated  from  his  mother 


THE  HOSTAGE  475 

his  regular  breathing  there  was  no  sound  to  interrupt  the 
high  monotonous  voice  of  the  little  girl  as  she  read  on,  when 
suddenly  her  elders  heard  upon  the  floors  below  the  advent 
of  new  authorities  and  of  a  message.  The  steps  of  six  men 
came  louder  up  the  stone  stairs,  the  doors  opened  as  though 
to  a  military  command,  and  the  princesses  saw,  crowding 
in  the  corner  of  the  small  room,  a  group  whose  presence  they 
did  not  understand,  though  among  them  the  Queen  recog- 
nised Michonis.  The  reading  stopped,  the  women  turned 
round  but  did  not  rise,  the  child  stirred  in  his  sleep,  One 
of  that  group  spoke  first  before  the  Queen  could  question 
them.  "We  have  come,"  he  said,  "by  order  of  the  House, 
to  tell  you  that  the  separation  of  Capet's  son  from  his  mother 
has  been  voted." 

Then  the  Queen  rose.  Never  until  now  had  she  aban- 
doned before  any  but  her  hushand,  or  perhaps  in  the  very 
intimacy  of  the  Council,  the  restraint  which  she  believed 
her  rank  to  demand.  The  violence  of  her  blood  had  been 
apparent  in  many  a  petulant  and  many  an  undignified 
gesture;  she  had  raised  her  voice  against  many  a  Deputa- 
tion; she  had  sneered  more  than  once  against  women  of  a 
poorer  kind ;  she  had  thrown  at  La  Fayette  the  keys  which 
he  demanded  on  their  return  to  the  palace  after  the  flight 
to  Varennes.  But  she  had  never  yet  lost  command  of 
herself.  Upon  this  terrible  night  for  the  only  time  in 
her  life  she  did  completely  lose  all  her  self-command. 
Something  confused  her  like  a  madness  and  all  the 
intensity  of  her  spirit  came  out  nakedly  in  defence  of 
the  child. 

She  stood  up  by  the  little  bed;  all  her  complexity  of  pride 
and  all  her  training  in  intrigue  deserted  her;  she  cried  out; 
she  took  refuge  in  such  weapons  as  the  women  of  the  poor, 


476  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

whom  no  law  protects,  use  to  defend  their  sanctities.  Her 
voice  rang,  became  shrill  and  shrieked  in  the  little  room, 
violent  and  rising;  she  threatened  death;  next  moment 
she  implored.  Her  little  daughter  and  her  sister-in-law 
caught  her  methods.  They  joined  in  the  imprecations  and 
in  the  prayers.  The  child  was  awakened  by  the  noise,  by 
the  shuffling  of  so  many  awkward  and  heavy  feet  in  the  door- 
way, by  the  passionate  outcries  around  him;  he  awoke 
and  gazed;  then  when  he  saw  his  mother  he  clung  to  her, 
and  she  kissed  him  repeatedly  and  held  him  as  though  he 
were  again  part  of  herself  and  as  though  none  could  take 
him  from  her  without  taking  her  life  also,  and  all  the  while 
her  prayers  and  execrations  showered  upon  the  armed  men 
as  they  stood  hesitating  apart  and  waiting. 

How  long  this  scene  continued  we  cannot  tell.  It  may 
have  been  the  best  part  of  an  hour.1  At  last  some  one  of 
the  deputation  found  decision  and  cried,  "Why  will 
you  make  this  scene?  No  one  wants  to  kill  your  son! 
Let  him  go  freely;  we  could  take  him  —  if  you  force 
us  to  that!" 

She  lifted  the  little  boy  up  and  dressed  him,  his  eyes  still 
dazed  with  sleep.  She  lingered  over  him  with  conventional 
benedictions,  repeated  and  prolonged.  Her  hands  could 
not  let  him  go.  Fearing  some  further  violence,  a  member 
of  the  deputation  muttered  a  suggestion  for  the  Guard, 
but  the  Queen's  active  passion  was  exhausted,  she  would 
be  violent  no  more.  She  herself,  perhaps,  loosened  his  little 
hands  from  her  dress  and  said,  "Come,  you  must  obey. 
.  .  .  Then  they  took  him  away;  the  great  door  was 

shut  upon  him;  the  women  within,  trembling  beside  the 
cot,  could  still  hear  the  child  pleading  with  a  lessening  voice 

1  The  Duchesse  d'Angouleme,  the  little  girl  then  present,  said,  years  after,  that  it  lasted  a  full  hour,  but 
such  memories  are  untrustworthy. 


THE  HOSTAGE  477 

in  the  distance  until  another  door  clanged  below  and  the 
rest  of  the  night  was  silent. 


God  has  made  a  law  whereby  women  are  moved  by 
strength  and  by  weakness,  but  in  different  ways:  by  strength 
as  a  necessity  for  their  protection,  so  that  they  demand  it 
in  men  and  in  things  and  yet  perpetually  rebel  against  it; 
and  by  weakness  as  an  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  all 
their  nature,  so  that  suffering  (if  it  is  sudden)  or  disaster 
calls  out  in  women  all  of  themselves:  and  this  is  especially 
true  of  mothers  and  sons. 

That  child,  that  boy,  had  seemed  at  first  so  rosy  and 
so  well  in  the  old  days  at  Versailles;  his  health  had  so  con- 
trasted with  the  sickly  advance  of  Death  upon  his  elder 
brother.  He  had  been  the  hope  of  the  Throne.  Then 
there  had  come  upon  him  the  curse  of  the  men  of  his  family, 
he  had  grown  weaker  and  more  weak,  he  had  had  nervous 
fits  of  rage,  a  nervous  fear  of  noise  unnatural  to  his  age. 
Some  had  thought  him  deficient;  all  had  noted  with  anxiety 
or  with  malice  his  increasing  weakness  during  the  period 
of  the  Royal  Family's  imprisonment.  Fits  had  seized 
him.  But  a  few  weeks  before  he  had  had  convulsions;  and 
all  June  during  the  relief  of  which  I  have  spoken,  fears 
for  him  had  already  arisen:  it  was  a  rapid  tragedy  of  child- 
hood that  was  soon  to  end  in  death.1  His  mother's  devo- 
tion —  having  him  now  only  for  its  object  in  the  isolation 
of  those  stone  walls  —  had  become  the  whole  of  her  being. 
That  he  had  grown  so  dull,  so  failing,  so  more  than  com- 
mon sickly,  so  odd,  did  but  heighten  in  some  way  the 

1  I  take  for  granted  the  death  of  Louis  XVII.  in  prison:  it  is  certified,  it  is  clear,  and  even  were  it  not  so,  the 
progress  of  his  disease  compels  such  a  conclusion:  but  this  book  is  not  the  place  for  a  discussion  upon  the 
question,  nor  could  so  considerable  a  debate  be  discussed  even  in  an  Appendix. 


478  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

mystic  feeling  in  her.  He  was  the  KING.  .  .  .  She 
was  observed  to  pay  him  a  certain  reverence,  and  she 
served  him  at  table  (as  spies  thought  at  least)  with  the 
gravity  of  a  ceremonial.  All  this  at  one  abominable  stroke 
she  lost. 

She  would  watch  him — oh,  unhappy  woman!  —  through 
chinks  and  chance  places  when  the  little  chap  was  taken 
out  to  get  the  air,  with  gaolers,  upon  the  roof  for  some  few 
minutes  of  the  day.  He,  of  course,  easily  and  at  once  forgot. 
He  soon  learnt  to  repeat  the  phrases  he  heard  around 
him,  laughed  when  his  guardians  laughed,  and  even  asked, 
as  he  heard  them  ask,  "whether  the  women  still  lived?" 
He  played  at  ball  a  little  with  his  gaolers;  but  he  weakened 
still  and  he  decayed.  That  child  was  the  head  of  an  auth- 
ority older  than  Islam,  and  the  heir  to  a  family  name  older 
than  the  Sagas,  and  in  his  little  drooping  body  were  all  the 
rights  of  the  Capetians. 

The  Queen  saw  him,  I  say,  for  a  few  moments  —  now 
upon  one  day  now  upon  another  —  by  chance,  as  he  took 
the  air  with  his  gaolers.  She  had  nothing  more  to  lose  — 
and  her  soul  was  broken. 


;  Those  who  were  to  destroy  the  new  society  of  the  French, 
to  rescue  or  to  avenge  the  Queen,  were  now  once  more  at 
hand  and  now  almost  arrived. 

Their  way  to  Paris  lay  open  but  for  two  last  perilous  and 
endangered  defences;  to  the  right  the  lines  of  Weissembourg, 
to  the  left  Maubeuge. 

There  are  two  avenues  of  approach  westward  into  the 
heart  of  Gaul  and  two  only.  The  great  marches  of  the 
French  eastward,  which  are  the  recurrent  flood-tides  of 


THE  HOSTAGE  479 

European  history,  pour  up  by  every  channel,  cross  the  Alps 
at  every  pass,  utilise  the  narrow  gate  of  Belfort,  the  narrower 
gate  of  the  Rhone,  the  gorge  of  the  Meuse,  the  Cerdagne,  the 
Samport,  Roncesvalles.  But  in  the  ebb,  when  the  outer 
peoples  of  Europe  attempt  invasion,  two  large  ways  alone 
satisfy  that  necessity  at  once  for  concentration  and  for  a 
wide  front  which  is  essential  to  any  attack  upon  a  people 
permanently  warlike. J  These  two  ways  pass,  the  one 
between  the  Vosges  and  the  Ardennes,  the  other  between 
the  Ardennes  and  the  sea.  By  the  first  of  these  have  come 
hosts  from  Attila's  to  those  of  1870;  by  the  second,  hosts  from 
the  little  war  band  of  Clovis  to  the  Allies  of  1815.  Both  ave- 
nues were  involved  in  this  balancing  moment  of  '93 :  the  first, 
the  passage  by  Lorraine  was  still  blocked  by  the  defence  of 
Mayence  and  the  lines  of  Weissembourg,2  the  second, 
the  passage  by  the  Low  Countries  was  all  but  won.  Of 
the  string  of  fortresses  defending  that  passage  Maubeuge  was 
now  almost  the  last,  would  soon  be  the  very  last  to  stand. 

It  was  not  upon  Mayence  and  the  lines  of  Weissembourg 
(though  these  to  soldiers  seemed  of  equal  importance), 
it  was  upon  the  bare  plains  of  the  north  that  Paris  strained 
its  eyes  in  these  perilous  hot  days  —  the  long  flat  frontier 
of  Hainault  and  of  Flanders — and  it  is  here  that  the  reader 
must  look  for  his  background  to  the  last  agony  of  the 
Queen. 

The  line  of  defence,  stretched  like  a  chain  across 
that  long  flat  frontier,  was  breaking  down,  had  almost 
disappeared.  Point  after  point  upon  the  line  had  gone;  it 
held  now  by  one  point  remaining,  and  the  ruin  of  that  was 

1  These  words  "  concentration  "  and  "a  wide  front "  may  seem  self-contradictory.      I  mean  by  concentration 
'a  massed  invasion,  if  you  are  to  succeed  against  a  military  people  ;  and  by  "a  wide  front"  the  necessity  for 

attacking  such  a  people  in  several  places  at  once,  if  you  are  to  succeed.  For  a  force  marching  by  a  single 
narrow  gate  (such  as  is  the  valley  of  the  Meuse)  is  in  peril  of  destruction  if  its  opponents  are  used  to  war. 

2  The  lines  of  Weissembourg  did  not,  of  course,  physically  block  the  entry;  they  lay  on  the  flank  of  it:  but 
until  the  army  behind  them  could  be  dislodged  it  made  impossible  an  advance  by  that  way  into  Lorraine. 


480  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

imminent:  the  Republicans  were  attentive,  in  a  fever  for  the 
final  crash,  when  the  last  pin-point  upon  which  the  defence 
was  stretched  should  give  way  and  the  weight  of  the  invaders 
should  pour  unresisted  upon  Paris.  When  that  march 
began  there  would  be  nothing  for  those  who  had  challenged 
the  world  but  "to  cover  their  faces  and  to  die." 

Of  what  character  is  that  northeastern  frontier  of  France 
and  what  in  military  terms  was  the  nature  of  the  blow 
which  was  about  to  fall  ? 

It  is  a  frontier  drawn  irregularly  due  southeast  for  a 
hundred  miles,  from  the  sea  to  the  difficult  highlands  of 
Ardennes  and  the  waste  Fagne  Land.  As  it  runs  thus 
irregularly,  it  cuts  arbitrarily  through  a  belt  of  population 
which  is  one  in  creed,  speech,  and  tradition:  there  is  there- 
fore no  moral  obstacle  present  to  the  crossing  of  it,  and  to 
this  moral  facility  of  passage  is  added  the  material  facility 
that  no  evident  gates  or  narrows  constrain  an  invading  army 
to  particular  entries.  From  the  dead  flat  of  the  sea-coast 
the  country  rises  slowly  into  little  easy  hills  and  slopes  of 
some  confusion,  but  not  till  that  frontier  reaches  and  abuts 
against  the  Ardennes  does  any  obstacle  mark  it.  It  is 
traversed  by  a  score  of  main  roads  suitable  for  a  parallel 
advance,  all  excellent  in  surface  and  in  bridges  and  other 
artifice;  it  is  thickly  set  with  towns  and  villages  to  afford 
repose  and  supply.  Lastly,  it  is  the  nearest  point  of  attack 
to  Paris.  Once  forced,  a  week's  rapid  marching  from  that 
frontier  brings  the  invader  to  the  capital,  and  there  is  nothing 
between. 

Such  advantages  —  which,  it  is  said,  tempt  unstable 
brains  in  Berlin  to-day  —  have  rendered  this  line,  whenever 
some  powerful  enemy  held  its  further  side,  of  supreme 
defensive  importance  to  the  French.  Until  the  formation 


THE  HOSTAGE  481 

of  the  Belgian  State  it  had  been  for  centuries  —  from  the 
battle  of  Bouvines  at  least  —  the  front  of  national  defence; 
here  the  tradition  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  the  genius 
of  Vauban  and  his  successors  had  established  a  network 
of  strongholds,  which  formed  the  barrier  now  so  nearly 
destroyed  in  this  summer  of  '93. 

These  fortresses  ran  along  that  frontier  closely  inter- 
dependent, every  one  a  support  to  its  neighbours,  forming 
a  narrowing  wedge  of  strongholds,  from  where  Dunkirk 
upon  the  sea  was  supported  by  Gravelines  to  where  the 
whole  system  came  to  a  point  in  the  last  fortress  and  camp 
of  Maubeuge,  close  up  against  the  impassable  Ardennes. 

Maubeuge  was  the  pivot  of  that  door.  Upon  Maubeuge 
the  last  effort  of  the  invaders  would  be  made.  The  rolling 
up  of  the  defending  line  of  strongholds  would  proceed  until 
Maubeuge  alone  should  be  left  to  menace  the  advance 
of  the  invasion.  Maubeuge  once  fallen,  all  the  Revolution 
also  fell. 

So  much  has  been  written  to  explain  the  failure  of  the 
Allies  and  the  ultimate  triumph  of  France  in  that  struggle, 
that  this  prime  truth  —  the  all-importance  of  Maubeuge  - 
clear  enough  to  the  people  of  the  time,  has  grown  obscured.1 
The  long  debates  of  the  Allies,  the  policy  of  the  Cabinet 
in  London,  the  diversion  upon  Dunkirk,  all  these  and 
many  other  matters  are  given  a  weight  far  beyond  their 
due  in  the  military  problem  of  '93.  The  road  from  the 
base  of  the  Allies  to  their  objective  in  Paris  lay  right  through 
the  quadrilateral  of  fortresses,  Mons,  Conde,  Valenciennes, 
Maubeuge.  Mons  was  theirs;  Conde,  Valenciennes  and 

1  The  great  authority  of  Joraini  laid  the  foundation  of  this  misconception,  one  which  the  reader  might  (per- 
haps erroneously")  find  implied  in  Mr.  Fortescue's  admirable  account  of  this  campaign ;  but  the  truth  is  that 
it  is  impossible  to  accumulate  detail — as  a  military  historian  is  bound  to  do — especially  where  long  cordons  arc 
opposed  to  each  other,  without  losing  sight  of  the  vital  points  of  the  line. 


482  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Maubeuge  blocked  their  advance  at  its  outset.  A  deflection 
to  the  left  was  rendered  impossible  by  the  Ardennes.  A 
deflection  to  the  right,  possible  enough,  added,  for  every 
degree  of  such  deflection,  an  added  peril  to  the  communica- 
tion of  the  advance,  laying  the  flank  of  the  communications 
open  to  attack  from  whatever  French  garrison  might  have 
been  left  uncaptured.  All  these  garrisons  must  be  accounted 
for  before  Coburg  could  march  on  Paris.  Mons,  as  I  have 
said,  was  in  Austrian  hands. and  in  Austrian  territory;  Conde, 
nay,  Valenciennes,  might  fall  successively  to  the  invader;  but 
so  long  as  Maubeuge  remained  untaken  the  march  upon 
Paris  was  blocked. 

There  were  not  wanting  at  that  moment  critics  who 
demanded  an  immediate  march  on  the  capital,  especially 
as  the  summer  waxed,  as  the  peril  of  the  Queen  increased, 
and  as  the  immobility  of  the  allies  gave  time  for  the  martial 
law  of  the  Terror  to  do  its  work,  and  to  raise  its  swarms  of 
recruits  from  all  the  countrysides:  these  critics  were  in 
error;  Coburg  at  the  head  of  the  Austrian  army  was  right. 
Poor  as  was  the  quality  of  the  French  troops  opposed  to 
him,  and  anarchic  as  was  their  constantly  changing  command, 
to  have  left  a  place  of  refuge  whither  they  could  concentrate 
and  whence  they  could  operate  in  a  body  upon  his  lengthen- 
ing communications,  as  he  pressed  on  to  Paris  through  hostile 
country,  would  have  been  mad  cavalry  work,  not  general- 
ship. Maubeuge  with  its  entrenched  camp,  Maubeuge 
open  to  continual  reinforcement  from  all  the  French 
country  that  lay  south  and  west  of  it,  was  essential  to  his 
final  advance.  That  Maubeuge  stood  untaken  transformed 
the  war,  and,  in  spite  of  every  disturbing  factor  in  the 
complex  problem,  it  should  be  a  fixed  datum  in  history  that 
the  resistance  of  Maubeuge  and  the  consequent  charge  at 


THE  HOSTAGE  483 

Wattignies  decided  '93  as  surely  as  the  German  artillery  at 
St.  Privat  decided  1870.  Maubeuge  was  the  hinge  of  all 
the  campaign. 

Coburg,  as  the  summer  heightened,  set  out  to  pocket  one 
by  one  the  supports  of  that  last  position;  he  easily  succeeded. 

In  Paris  a  vague  sense  of  doom  filled  all  the  leaders,  but  a 
fever  of  violent  struggle  as  well.  .  .  .  The  Queen  in  her 
prison  saw  once  again  (and  shuddered  at  it)  the  dark  face 
of  Drouet  and  heard  his  threatening  voice. 

All  France  had  risen.  There  was  civil  war  in  the  west 
and  in  the  north.  A  Norman  woman  had  murdered  Marat. 
Mayence  was  strictly  held  all  round  about  with  the 
Marseillese  raging  within;  and  as  for  the  Barrier  of 
Fortresses  to  the  north,  Coburg  now  held  them  in  the 
hollow  of  his  hand. 

A  fortnight  after  the  Dauphin  had  been  taken  from  the 
Queen,  the  fortress  of  Conde  fell;  it  had  fallen  from  lack 
of  food.  The  Council  of  Maubeuge  heard  that  news. 
Valenciennes  would  come  next  along  the  line — then, 
they!  They  wrote  to  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  a 
letter,  which  may  still  be  read  in  the  archives  of  the  town, 
demanding  provisions.  None  came. 

It  is  difficult  to  conceive  the  welter  of  the  time:  dis- 
tracted orders  flying  here  and  there  along  the  hundred 
miles  of  cordon  that  stretched  from  Ardennes  to  the  channel : 
orders  contradictory,  unobeyed,  or,  if  obeyed,  fatal.  Com- 
mands shifted  and  reshifted;  civilians  from  the  Parlia- 
ment carrying  the  power  of  life  and  death  and  muddling 
half  they  did;  levies  caught  up  at  random,  bewildered, 


484  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

surrendering,  deserting ;  recruits  too  numerous  for  the  army  to 
digest,  a  lack  of  all  things.  No  provisions  entered  Maubeuge. 

July  dragged  on,  and  Maubeuge  could  hear  down  the 
west  wind  the  ceaseless  booming  of  the  guns  round  Valen- 
ciennes. Upon  July  26th,  Dubay,  the  Representative  on 
mission  for  the  Parliament,  sent  to  and  established  in 
Maubeuge,  heard  an  unusual  silence.  As  the  day  drew  on 
a  dread  rose  in  him.  The  guns  round  Valenciennes  no 
longer  boomed.  Only  rare  shots  from  this  point  and  from 
that  were  heard:  perhaps  it  was  the  weather  deceived  him. 
But  all  next  day  the  same  damnable  silence  hung  over  the 
west.  On  the  30th  he  wrote  to  the  Parliament,  "We 
hear  no  firing  from  Valenciennes  —  but  we  are  sure  they 
cannot  have  surrendered."  They  had  surrendered. 

So  Valenciennes  was  gone!  .  .  .  Conde  was  gone. 
.  .  .  Maubeuge  alone  remained,  with  the  little  out- 
post of  Le  Quesnoy  to  delay  a  moment  its  necessary  invest- 
ment and  sure  doom. 

The  officer  in  command  of  Maubeuge  awaited  his  orders. 
They  came  from  Paris  in  two  days.  Their  rhetoric  was  of 
a  different  kind  from  that  in  which  Ministers  who  are 
gentlemen  of  breeding  address  the  General  Officers  of  their 
own  society  to-day.  The  Committee  of  Public  Safety  had 
written  thus:  "Valenciennes  has  fallen:  you  answer  on 
your  head  for  Maubeuge." 

Far  off  in  Germany,  where  that  other  second  avenue 
of  invasion  was  in  dispute,  the  French  in  Mayence  had 
surrendered. 


So  July  ended,  and  immediately  upon  the  1st  of  August 
the  defiant  decree  was  thrown  at  Europe  that  the  Queen 


OF 


THE  HOSTAGE  485 

herself  should  be  tried.  So  closely  did  that  decision  mix 
with  the  military  moment  that  it  was  almost  a  military 
thing  and  at  half  -past  two  on  the  morning  of  the  2nd, 
the  order  reached  her:  she  in  turn  was  to  go  down  the  way 
so  many  had  begun  to  tread. 

She  showed  no  movement  of  the  body  or  of  the  mind. 
Night  had  already  brought  her  too  many  terrors.  The 
two  women  were  awakened.  The  decree  of  the  Con- 
vention which  ordered  the  transference  of  the  Queen  to  the 
Conciergerie  for  her  trial  was  read.  She  answered  not  a 
word,  but  dressed  herself  and  made  a  little  package  of  her 
clothes  ;  she  embraced  her  daughter  gently,  and  bade  her 
regard  Madame  Elizabeth  as  her  second  mother;  then  stood 
for  a  moment  or  two  in  the  arms  of  that  sister-in-law  who  "^ 
answered  her  in  whispers.  She  turned  to  go  and  did  not 
look  backward,  but  as  she  went  out  to  get  into  the  carriage 
which  was  to  carry  her  across  the  City,  she  struck  her 
head  violently  against  the  low  lintel  of  the  door.  They 
asked  her  if  she  was  hurt,  and  she  answered  in  the  first  and 
only  words  that  she  addressed  to  her  captors  that  nothing 
more  on  earth  could  give  her  pain.  The  carriage  travelled 
rapidly  through  the  deserted  streets  of  the-  night,  the  clatter- 
ing of  the  mounted  guard  on  either  side  of  it.  It  was  her 
one  brief  glimpse  of  the  world  between  a  prison  and  a 
prison. 

As  the  Queen  drove  through  the  night,  silent  as  it  was, 
there  reached  her  those  noises  of  a  city  which  never  cease, 
and  which  to  prisoners  in  transition  (to  our  gagged  victims 
to-day  as  they  cross  London  from  one  Hell  to  another) 
are  a  sort  of  gaiety  or  at  least  a  whiff  of  other  men's  living. 
These  noises  were  the  more  alive  and  the  more  perpetual 
in  this  horrid  August  dark  of  '93  because  a  last  agony  was 


486  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

now  risen  high  upon  the  Revolution;  then  news  had  been 
of  defeats,  of  cities  fallen,  of  Valenciennes  itself  surrendered: 
so  that  the  next  news  might  be  the  last.  All  night  long  men 
sat  up  in  the  wine-shops  quarrelling  on  it;  even  as  her  gaolers 
drove  her  by,  she  saw  lights  in  dirty  ground-floor  windows 
and  she  heard  from  time  to  time  snatches  of  marching 
songs.  It  was  the  invasion. 


XIX 
THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE 

FROM  THE  MORNING  OF  AUGUST  2,  1793,  TO  MIDNIGHT  OF 
SUNDAY,  OCTOBER  13,  1793 

THE  Queen  descended  from  her  carriage.  She  was 
weak,  but  erect.  The  close  heat  of  the  night  and 
her  sleeplessness  and  her  fatigue  had  caused  great 
beads  of  sweat  to  stand  upon  her  forehead.  Up  river  along 
the  quays  there  had  already  showed,  as  she  crossed  the 
bridge  on  to  the  Island  of  the  Cite,  a  faint  glimmer  of  dawn, 
but  here  in  the  courtyard  all  was  still  thick  night.  The 
gates  of  the  Conciergerie  opened  rapidly  and  shut  behind  her. 

Her  gaolers  led  the  way  down  a  long,  low,  and  dark 
corridor,  stiflingly  close  and  warm,  lit  here  and  there  with 
smoky  candles.  She  heard  the  murmur  of  voices,  and  saw 
at  the  end  of  the  passage  a  group  of  the  police  and  of  magis- 
trates at  the  door  of  the  little  room  that  was  to  be  her  cell. 
She  entered  through  the  throng,  saw  the  official  papers 
signed  at  the  miserable  little  table,  and  heard  the  formal 
delivery  of  her  person  to  the  authorities  of  the  prison;  then 
they  left  her,  and  in  their  place  came  in  a  kindly  woman,  the 
wife  of  the  porter,  and  with  her  a  young  girl,  whose  name 
she  heard  was  Rosalie.  The  Queen  sat  down  on  the  straw- 
bottomed  chair  and  glanced  round  by  the  light  of  the  candle 
beside  her. 

It  was  a  little  low  room,  quite  bare:  damp  walls,  the 
paper  of  which,  stamped  with  the  royal  fleur  de  lys,  hung 

487 


488  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

mildewed,  rose  from  a  yet  damper  floor  of  brick  set  herring- 
bone-wise; a  small  camp-bed  covered  with  the  finest  linen 
alone  relieved  it,  and  a  screen  some  four  feet  high,  between 
her  and  the  door,  afforded  some  little  shelter.  Above  her 
a  small  barred  window  gave  upon  the  paving  of  the  prison 
yard,  for  the  cell  was  half  underground.  Here  Custine 
-  who  had  lost  the  North  and  was  to  be  executed  for  the  fall 
of  Valenciennes  -  -  had  been  confined  till  his  removal  but  a 
few  hours  before  to  make  way  for  the  Queen.  Here  is 
now  the  canteen  of  the  prison. 

It  was  very  late.  The  new  day  was  quite  broad  and 
full,  showing  the  extreme  paleness  of  her  face  and  her 
weary  eyes.  She  stood  upon  a  little  stuff -covered  hassock, 
hung  her  watch  upon  a  nail,  and  began  to  undress,  to 
sleep  if  she  might  sleep  for  a  few  hours.  A  servant  of 
the  turnkey's,  a  girl  called  Rosalie,  timidly  offered  her 
help;  the  Queen  put  her  gently  aside,  saying:  "Since  I 
have  no  maid  I  have  learnt  to  do  all  myself."  They  blew 
their  candles  out  and  left  her  to  repose. 

On  the  fourth  day,  the  6th  of  August,  they  came  again 
and  took  from  her  further  things  which  a  prisoner  might 
not  enjoy;  among  them  that  little  watch  of  hers  in  gold. 
She  gave  it  to  them.  It  was  the  little  watch  which  she  had 
worn  when  she  had  come  in  as  a  child  to  Compiegne  on 
her  way  to  the  great  marriage  and  to  the  throne.  It  was 
the  last  of  her  ornaments. 

A  routine  began  and  lasted  unbroken  almost  till  August 
ended.  In  that  little  low  cell,  more  than  half  underground, 
dimly  lit  by  the  barred  window  that  stood  level  with  the 
flags  outside,  day  succeeded  day  without  insult,  but  with- 
out relief,  and  here  at  last  her  strait  captivity  began  what 
the  Temple  hitherto  could  never  do.  Her  spirit  did  not 


LAST   PORTRAIT  OF  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Presumably  sketched  in  the  Temple  ;  now  at  Versailles 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE        489 

fail,  but  her  body  began  to  weaken,  and  in  her  attitude  and 
gesture  there  had  entered  the  appearance  of  despair.  .  .  . 
Outside  the  Committee  wondered  whether  their  daring 
might  not  bear  fruit,  and  whether,  to  save  the  Queen,  the 
frontier  might  not  be  relieved.  But  no  offer  came  from  the 
Kings,  and  the  hostage  of  the  Republicans  remained  useless 
on  their  anxious  hands.  ...  In  Brussels  Fersen  heard 
and  went  wild,  talked  folly  of  an  immediate  march  on  Paris, 
cursed  Coburg  and  all  rules  of  war;  but  Coburg  was  not  to 
be  moved  —  he  knew  his  trade,  and  still  prepared  the  sieges. 
She  had  no  privacy.  All  day  long  a  corporal  of  police 
and  his  man  sat  on  guard  in  a  corner  of  the  room.  All 
night  her  door,  in  spite  of  its  two  great  bolts,  was  guarded. 
For  the  rest  her  wants  were  served.  She  asked  for  a  special 
water  from  the  neighbourhood  of  what  had  been  Ver- 
sailles, and  she  obtained  it.  They  hired  books  for  her.  They 
permitted  her  good  food  and  the  daily  expense  upon  it  of  a 
very  wealthy  woman.1  The  porter's  wife  and  the  maid 
were  very  tender  to  her.  They  put  flowers  on  her  small 
oak  table  and  they  marketed  at  her  desire.  Her  other 
service  wounded  her;  first  an  old  woman  who  was  useless, 
the  turnkey's  mother ;  next  a  young  virago,  Havel  by  name, 
whose  rudeness  disturbed  her.  They  would  let  her  have 
no  steel  —  not  even  the  needles  with  which  she  was  knitting 
for  her  little  son,  nor  a  knife  to  cut  her  food;  but  more  than 
all  there  sank  into  her  the  intolerable  monotony,  the  fixed 
doubt,  the  utter  isolation  which  made  the  place  a  tomb. 
The  smallest  incident  moved  her.  She  would  watch  her 
gaolers  at  their  picquet  and  note  the  game,  she  would 
listen  to  distant  music,  she  would  greet  with  a  dreadful 
reminiscence  of  her  own  the  porter's  little  son,  and  cry  over 

1  What  would  come  to  a  pound  a  day  in  our  money,  and  at  our  scale  of  living — for  the  uncooked  food  alone. 


490  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

him  a  little  and  speak  of  the  Dauphin  — but  this  last  scene 
was  so  vivid  that  at  last  they  dared  no  longer  bring  the 
child.  She  kept  for  consolation  all  this  while,  hidden  in 
her  bosom,  a  little  yellow  glove  of  her  boy's,  and  in  it  a 
miniature  of  him  and  a  lock  of  his  hair. 


Meanwhile  Maubeuge: 

On  the  day  which  had  seen  the  Queen  enter  the  Con- 
ciergerie  the  Commander  of  Maubeuge  issued  the  first 
warning  of  danger.  The  aged,  the  women  and  the  children 
were  invited  to  leave  the  shelter  of  the  fortress  and  to  betake 
themselves  to  the  open  country.  That  order  was  but 
partially  obeyed  —  and  still  no  provisions  reached  the 
town. 

Now  that  strong  Valenciennes  had  fallen,  the  Allies 
had  their  business  so  thoroughly  in  hand  that  some  debate 
arose  among  them  whether  the  main  garrison  of  Maubeuge 
should  be  assailed  at  once  or  whether  the  little  outlying  posts 
should  be  picked  up  first:  the  large  and  the  small  were 
equally  certain  to  capitulate:  there  was  ample  leisure  to 
choose. 

Coburg  was  for  the  main  attack  on  Maubeuge  —  but 
he  was  not  keen  —  the  wretched  little  force  at  Cambrai 
would  do  to  begin  with  —  or  even  the  handful  in  Le 
Quesnoy.  It  was  simply  a  question  of  the  order  in  which 
they  should  be  plucked. 

The  young  Duke  of  York,  acting  as  he  was  bidden  to 
act  from  Westminster,  proposed  to  divert  some  40,000 
men  to  the  capture  of  Dunkirk;  for  it  must  be  remembered 
that  all  this  war  was  a  war  of  Conquest,  that  the  frontier 
towns  taken  were  to  compensate  the  Allies  after  the  Revolu- 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE        491 

tion  had  been  destroyed,  and  that  Dunkirk  was  historically 
a  bastion  of  importance  to  England,  and  that  all  the  advance 
was  to  end  in  the  annexation  of  French  land. 

This  march  upon  Dunkirk  has  been  condemned  by 
most  historians  because  it  failed;  had  it  succeeded  none 
could  have  praised  it  too  highly.  Politically  it  was  just  in 
conception  (for  it  gave  Britain  some  balancing  advantage 
against  the  Austrians  their  allies) ,  and  as  a  military  project 
it  was  neither  rash  nor  ill-planned.  The  force  left  with 
Coburg  was  ample  for  his  task,  and  nothing  could  be 
easier  than  for  the  Austrian  army  alone  to  reduce  (as 
it  did  reduce)  the  worthless  garrisons  opposed  to  it, 
while  the  English  commander  was  doing  English  work 
upon  the  right.1 

The  combined  forces  spent  the  close  of  the  week  after 
Valenciennes  had  fallen  in  driving  off  such  of  the  French 
as  were  still  in  the  open  under  Kilmain.  A  few  days  later 
forty-seven  battalions,  of  whom  a  full  seventh  were  English 
and  Irish  men,  marched  off  under  York  for  Dunkirk, 
while  Coburg  at  his  ease  sat  down  before  the  little  town  of 
Le  Quesnoy,  the  last  fortified  support  of  Maubeuge  upon 
the  west.  Upon  the  same  day  he  brushed  the  French  out 
of  the  wood  of  Mormal,  the  last  natural  obstacle  which 
could  protect  Maubeuge  when  Le  Quesnoy  should  have 
fallen.  It  was  the  17th  of  August  —  but  already  in 
Paris  there  had  passed  one  of  the  chief  accidents  of 
history :  an  accident  from  which  were  to  flow  all  the  tactics 
of  the  Great  War,  ultimately  the  successes  of  Napoleon,  and 

1  Even  as  it  was  and  in  spite  of  his  failure  before  Dunkirk,  the  Duke  of  York  had  plenty  of  time  to  come 
.  back  and  help  Coburg  after  that  failure,  and  to  have  joined  him  in  front  of  Maubeuge  {before  the  French  at- 
tempted the  relief  of  that  town.  The  English  commander  could  easily  have  been  present  at  Wattignies,  and 
would  probably  or  certainly  have  prevented  that  miracle.  But  no  one  foresaw  the  miracle.  Coburg  did  not 
ask  York  to  come  till  the  7th  of  October.  York  did  not  march  till  the  loth,  and  even  then  he  thought  he  had 
the  leisure  to  while  a  week  upon  forty  miles  1 


492  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

immediately  the  salvation  of  the  Revolution :  Lazare  Ca 
had  been  admitted  to  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety. 


In  Paris  the  Queen  endured  that  August:  and,  isolated 
from  the  world,  she  did  not  know  what  chances  of  war  might 
imperil  her  through  the  fury  of  a  defeated  nation  or  might 
save  her  by  the  failure  of  the  Terror  and  its  martial  law. 

As  she  thus  waited  alone  and  in  silence  the  pressure 
upon  the  Republic  grew.  Lyons  had  risen  when  Marat 
died.  Vendee  was  not  defeated:  before  the  month  ended 
the  English  were  in  Toulon. 

As  the  hot  days  followed  each  other  in  their  awful  same- 
ness she  still  declined;  her  loss  of  blood  never  ceased,  her 
vigour  dwindled.  A  doctor  of  great  position,  the  surgeon 
Souberbielle,1  visited  the  cell  and  denounced  its  dampness 
for  a  danger:  nothing  was  done.  She  lived  on,  knowing 
nothing  of  the  world  beyond  and  above  those  dirty  walls, 
but  vaguely  she  hoped  or  imagined  an  exchange  and  to 
be  reunited  with  her  children  —  to  survive  this  unreal  time 
and  to  find  herself  abroad  again  with  living  men.  No 
change  or  interruption  touched  the  long  watch  of  her  soul 
until,  when  she  had  already  jpassed  three  weeks  and  more 
in  nothingness,  that  inspector  of  police  who  had  already 
befriended  her  in  the  Temple,  Michonis,  entered;  and  a 
certain  companion,  spare  and  wild-eyed  was  with  him. 
It  was  a  Wednesday;  the  last  Wednesday  in  August;  the 
month  had  yet  three  days  to  run.  • 

1  He  was  famous  for  his  operations  for  the  stone;  sat  upon  the  jury  that  condemned  the  Queen,  was  sum- 
moned for  his  art  to  Westminster  Hospital,  wondered  in  old  age  why  the  Restoration  would  not  give  his  Euro- 
pean fame  a  salaried  post;  thought  it  might  be  a  fear  of  his  infirmities  of>ge;  danced  high  vigourously  before 
the  Committee  of  medical  patronage  to  prove,  at  ninety,  his  unimpaired  vivacity,  was  refused  any  public 
salary,  and  died —  some  years  later —  a  still  active  but  disappointed  man,"  fearing  that  his  politics  had  had 
some  secret  effect  in  prejudicing  the  royal  family  against  him." 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE        493 

These  two  were  in  league,  and  fantastic  fortune  had 
put  an  official  of  the  city  at  her  disposal  for  escape. 

The  whole  scene  was  rapid  —  she  had  barely  time  to 
understand  the  prodigious  opportunity.  She  noticed  in 
the  hand  of  Michonis'  companion  a  bunch  of  pinks  — 
perhaps  she  half  recognised  his  face  (indeed,  he  had  fought 
in  defence  of  the  palace),  she  failed  to  take  the  flowers  and 
he  let  them  fall  behind  the  stove  —  and  the  while  Michonis 
was  covering  all  by  some  official  question  or  other.  It  was 
not  a  minute's  work  and  they  were  gone:  but  in  the  flowers, 
when,  after  her  bewilderment,  she  sought  them,  she  found 
a  note.  Its  contents  offered  her  safety.  Michonis  (it  ran) 
trusted  as  an  official,  would  produce  an  order  to  transfer 
her  person  to  some  other  prison;  in  the  passage  he  would 
permit  her  to  fly.  The  note  asked  for  a  reply. 

She  had  no  pen  or  pencil,  but  she  found  a  plan  for  answer- 
ing, for  she  took  a  pin  and  pricked  out  painfully  these  words 
on  a  slip  of  paper:  "I  am  watched;  I  neither  write  nor  speak; 
I  count  on  you;  I  will  come."  The  policeman  of  her  guard  — 
not  the  corporal  —  had  been  bought.  He  took  the  slip  of 
paper  from  her  and  gave  it  to  the  porter's  wife,  her  friend. 
Next  day  Michonis  called  for  it,  knew  that  the  Queen  was 
ready,  laid  all  his  plans,  and  on  the  Monday,  by  night, 
appeared  at  the  door  of  the  Conciergerie  with  his  official 
order  for  the  removal  of  the  Queen. 

Even  in  these  few  hours  there  had  been  time  for  treason. 
The  policeman  had  revealed  the  message  to  the  authorities. 
The  faces  Michonis  saw  at  the  gate  of  the  prison  by  the 
sentry's  lamp  when  he  came  up  that  Monday  night, 
were  not  those  he  expected  or  knew.  His  plot  was  already 
in  the  hands  of  the  Government  and  he  was  lost. 

Within,  the  Queen  waited  in  an  agony  of  silence  for 


494  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

the  sound  of  her  deliverers;  the  hours  of  the  morning  drew 
on  and  the  summer  dawn  of  the  Tuesday  broadened;  no 
steps  had  sounded  on  the  stones  of  the  passage :  everything 
had  failed. 

Her  deliverer  suffered.  She  herself  was  closely  examined 
and  transferred  to  another  cell  where  she  must  wait,  in  a 
more  rigid  compulsion,  for  the  end. 

No  other  human  fortune1  came  to  Marie  Antoinette 
from  that  day  until,  seven  weeks  later,  she  died. 


West  and  a  little  north  of  Maubeuge,  but  twenty  miles 
away,  the  watchers  a  month  and  more  before  had  heard 
the  ceaseless  guns  round  Valenciennes.  Then  had  come 
the  silence  of  the  surrender.  Now  they  heard  much  nearer, 
west  and  a  little  to  the  south,  the  loud  fury  of  a  new  and 
neighbouring  bombardment  as  the  shot  poured  into  Le 
Quesnoy.  Soon,  as  they  knew,  those  guns  would  be  trained 
on  their  own  walls.  Little  Le  Quesnoy  was  the  last  of  the 
line  but  one,  and  they,  in  Maubeuge,  the  last  of  all.  The 
Monday,  the  first  Monday  in  September,  the  Tuesday,  the 
Wednesday,  the  Thursday,  the  Friday,  all  that  week  the 
garrison  at  Maubeuge  listened  to  the  endless  sound  which 
never  faltered  by  day  or  by  night,  and  they  still  wondered 
how  long  it  might  endure:  there  were  but  6,000  in  the  little 
place  and  their  doom  was  so  certain  that  their  endurance 
seemed  quite  vain.  Sunday,  and  the  guns  never  paused  or 
weakened ;  the  second  Monday  came  and  they  still  raged  — 
but  on  the  ninth  day  when  the  marvel  seemed  to  have 
grown  permanent,  on  the  Tuesday  (it  was  the  day  that 
the  Queen  was  thrust  into  her  second  and  more  vigorous 

1 1  reject  the  story  of  her  communion. 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE         495 

imprisonment)  again  —  as  with  Valenciennes  —  the  omin- 
ous silence  came:  Le  Quesnoy  was  treating,  and  Maubeuge 
now  made  ready  for  its  end. 

The  free  troops  to  the  south  and  east  (two  poor  divisions) 
moved  doubtfully  toward  the  entrenched  camp  of  the 
fortress  —  knowing  well  that  they  must  in  a  few  days  be 
contained:  there  was  no  food:  there  were  not  even  muskets 
for  them  all. 

Around  them  by  detachments  the  French  forces  were 
being  eaten  up.  The  little  garrison  of  Cambray  had 
marched  out  to  relieve  its  neighbour  —  6,000  men,  three- 
quarters  of  the  infantry  regulars,  three  squadrons,  and  a 
battery  of  guns.  The  Hungarians  rode  through  that 
battery  before  it  could  unlimber,  refused  to  accept  surrender, 
broke  the  line,  and  hacked  and  killed  until  a  remnant  got 
off  at  a  run  under  the  guns  of  Bouchain.  D  eel  aye,  their 
general,  survived;  he  was  in  Paris  within  forty -eight  hours, 
tried  within  another  forty -eight  and  on  the  morrow  beheaded. 

For  a  fortnight  these  contemptuous  successes  on  the 
fringe  of  Coburg's  army  continued,  and  the  main  force 
meanwhile  was  gathering  supplies,  calling  in  detachments, 
organising  train,  and  making  all  ready  for  the  last  and 
decisive  blow  that  should  shatter  Maubeuge.  In  Maubeuge 
they  hurriedly  and  confusedly  prepared.  Such  grain  as 
they  could  gather  from  neighbouring  farms  was  seized, 
many  of  "the  useless  and  the  suspect"  wrere  expelled,  the 
able-bodied  civilians  were  set  to  dig,  to  entrench,  and  to  com- 
plain, and  over  all  this  work  was  a  man  worthy  of  the  place 
and  the  occasion  for,  on  a  high  morning,  the  15th  of 
September,  but  a  day  or  two  after  the  surrender  of  Le 
Quesnoy,  there  had  gallopped  into  Maubeuge  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  Parliament  well  chosen  by  the  Terror  to 


496  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

superintend  such  an  issue:  he  rode  straight  in  the  long 
stirrups  of  the  cavalry  with  harsh,  eccentric,  and  powerful, 
clean  face ;  a  young  man,  dark  and  short  and  square :  it  was 
Drouet. 

The  two  divisions  hung  nervously,  the  one  east,  the  other 
west  of  the  fortress,  making  a  show  to  dispute  the  passage 
of  the  river  against  forces  three  times  their  own  in  number 
and  indefinitely  their  superiors  in  training  and  every  quality 
of  arms;  on  the  28th1  of  September,  at  dawn,  Coburg 
crossed  where  he  chose  both  above  or  below  the  town; 
of  the  French  divisions  one  -was  swept,  the  other  hunted 
into  the  fortress  —  before  noon  the  thing  was  done,  and 
the  French  force  —  happy  to  have  escaped  with  but  a  partial 
panic  —  was  blocked  and  held.  With  the  next  day  the 
strain  began,  for  the  Austrians  drove  the  surrounding 
peasantry  within  the  walls  and  in  the  same  hour  burnt  the 
stores  accumulated  outside  the  walls.  On  the  third  day  the 
first  of  the  horses  within  Maubeuge  was  killed  for  food. 
"Drouet,  for  all  his  high  heart,  doubted  if  the  Republic 
could  deliver  them  and  knew  the  sudden  extremity  of  the 
town.  He  imagined  a  bold  thing.  On  the  2nd  of  Octo- 
ber, the  fourth  day  of  the  siege,  he  took  a  hundred  dragoons 
—  men  of  his  own  old  arm  —  and  set  out  cross  the  Austrian 
lines  by  night:  he  designed  a  long  ride  to  the  Meuse  itself 
and  the  sending  of  immediate  news  to  the  Committee  of  the 
danger  of  Maubeuge;  he  feared  lest  those  civilians  in 
Paris  should  imagine  that  a  week,  ten  days,  a  fortnight 
were  all  one  to  the  beleaguered  town  and  lest  they  should 
frame  their  plan  of  relief  upon  the  false  hope  of  a  long  siege. 
So  he  rode  out  —  and  the  enemy  heard  the  hoof -beats  and 
j  caught  him.  They  put  that  tall  man  in  chains;  they  caged 

•»        l  Not  as  Gomini  says,  the  29th.  i 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE        497 

him  also  and  made  him  a  show.  In  Brussels,  Fersen,  with 
a  dreadful  curiosity  went  to  peep  at  his  face  behind  the 
iron  bars;  in  Paris  the  woman  whose  chance  of  flight  he 
had  destroyed  at  Varennes  sat  and  awaited  her  judges. 


Three  days  passed  in  Maubeuge  and  all  the  meat,  salted 
and  fresh,  was  sequestrated.  The  manuscripts  in  the 
monastery  were  torn  up  for  cartridges;  everything  was 
needed.  On  the  next  day,  the  6th  of  October,  hay  and  straw 
were  commandeered.  On  the  next,  the  7th,  a  census  of  the 
food  remaining  showed,  for  over  30,000  adult  men  and  all 
the  women  and  children  besides,  barely  400  head,  and  of 
these  more  than  three-quarters  small  sheep  in  poor  condi- 
tion. Upon  the  10th  such  little  grain  as  the  town  contained 
was  seized  by  the  Commandant.  The  next  day  the  whole 
population  was  upon  half-rations  and  the  townsmen  were 
struggling  with  the  soldiery.  Upon  the  morrow  again,  the 
12th,  counsel  was  taken  of  the  desperate  need  to  advise  the 
Government  that  the  place  was  all  but  gone,  and  it  was 
designed  that  by  night  such  as  might  volunteer  should  bear 
the  news  or  perish  in  crossing  the  lines. 


That  evening,  the  evening  of  the  12th,  after  dark, 
Marie  Antoinette  was  led  out  from  her  cell  for  that  pre- 
liminary Interrogation  which,  in  French  procedure,  pre- 
ceeds  the  public  trial.  They  led  her  from  her  little  cell, 
through  the  narrow  passages,  into  a  great  empty  hall.  Two 
-  candles,  the  only  lights  in  that  echoing  darkness,  stood  upon 
the  table. 

She  was  in  a  deep  ignorance  of  her  position  and  of  Europe. 


498  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

The  silence  of  the  room  corresponded  to  the  silence  within 
her:  its  darkness  to  the  complete  loneliness  of  her  heart. 
She  did  not  know  what  were  the  fortunes  of  the  French 
army,  what  advance,  if  any,  had  been  made  by  their  en- 
emies — whom  she  still  regarded  as  her  rescuers.  She  knew 
nothing  of  the  last  desperate  risk  upon  the  frontier  which 
the  Republic  ran;  she  knew  nothing  of  the  steps  by  which 
she  had  been  brought  to  this  position,  the  demand  in 
Parliament  for  her  execution  as  the  news  from  the  front 
got  worse  and  worse:  the  summoning  of  the  Court:  the 
formation  of  the  Bench  that  was  to  try  her.  Least  of  all 
did  she  know  that  the  extreme  mad  group  whom  Hebert 
led  had  gone  to  her  little  sickly  son  suggesting  to  him 
(probably  believing  what  they  suggested)  nameless  cor- 
ruptions from  her  hand :  to  these  they  believed  he  had  been 
witness,  nay,  himself  a  victim ;  she  did  not  know  that  to  these 
horrors  that  group  had  caused  the  child's  trembling  signa- 
ture to  be  affixed.  .  .  .  He  had  sat  there  swinging  his 
legs  in  the  air  from  the  high  chair  in  which  they  had  placed 
him  to  question  him:  he  had  answered  "Yes"  to  all  they 
suggested.  .  .  he  was  her  little  son!  She,  imprisoned 
far  off  from  him,  knew  nothing  of  that  hellish  moment. 
She  was  utterly  deserted.  She  saw  nothing  but  the  dark 
empty  room  and  the  two  pale  candles  that  shone  upon 
the  faces  of  the  men  who  were  soon  to  try  her:  they 
marked  in  relief  the  aquiline  face  of  the  chief  Judge, 
Herman.  The  other  faces  were  in  darkness. 

Certain  questions  privately  put  to  her  were  few  and 
simple,  a  mere  preliminary  to  the  trial;  she  answered  them 
as  simply  in  her  own  favour.  Her  dress  was  dark  and  poor. 
She  sat  between  two  policemen  upon  a  bench  in  the  vast 
black  void  of  the  unfurnished  hall  and  answered,  and, 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE        499 

when  she  had  answered,  signed.  She  answered  con- 
ventionally that  she  wished  the  country  well,  that  she  had 
never  wished  it  ill,  she  signed  (as  they  told  her  to  sign)  under 
the  title  of  the  "widow  of  Capet."  They  named  two 
barristers  to  defend  her,  Chauveau  Lagarde  and  Tron£on 
Ducourdray,  and  she  was  led  back  to  her  cell  and  to  her 
silence.  Next  day  the  13th,  these  lawyers  were  informed 
and  came  to  consult  with  her. 


Upon  the  13th  by  night,  twelve  dragoons  volunteered 
to  take  news  out  of  Maubeuge,  a  sergeant  leading  them. 
They  swam  the  Sambre  and  got  clean  away.  They  rode 
all  night,  they  rode  by  morning  into  Philippeville  and  begged 
that  three  cannon  shots  might  be  fired,  for  that  was  the 
signal  by  which  Maubeuge  was  to  know  that  they  had 
brought  news  of  the  hard  straits  of  the  city  beyond  the 
Austrian  lines.  They  rode  on  without  sleep  to  Givet,  and 
there  at  last  they  heard  that  an  army  was  on  the  march, 
straight  for  the  relief  of  the  siege. 

Carnot  had  gathered  that  army,  bringing  in  the  scattered 
and  broken  detachments  from  the  right  and  the  left,  con- 
centrating them  upon  Avesnes,  until  at  last  he  had  there  to 
his  hand  45,000  men.  Carnot  was  there  in  Avesnes  and 
we  have  records  of  the  ragged  army,  some  of  them  fresh 
from  defeats,  most  of  them  worthless,  pouring  in.  There 
were  those  who  had  one  shoe,  there  were  those  who  had 
none;  they  were  armed  in  varying  fashion;  they  were  wholly 
under-gunned.  The  boys  straggled,  marched,  or  drooped 
in,  the  gayer  of  them  roaring  marching  songs,  but  the 
greater  part  disconsolate.  With  such  material,  in  one 
way  or  another,  Carnot  designed  to  conquer.  Maubeuge 


500  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

had  been  upon  half-rations  since  the  beginning  of  the  week, 
it  might  ask  for  terms  in  any  hour,  and  between  him  and  it 
stretched  the  long  high  line  of  wood  wherein  Coburg  lay 
entrenched  impregnably. 


The  nominal  command  of  the  hosts  so  gathered  was  in 
the  hands  of  Jourdan,  a  travelling  draper  who  had  volun- 
teered in  the  American  War,  whom  the  Committee  of 
Public  Safety  had  discovered,  once  more  a  draper,  and  to 
whom  it  had  given  first  the  army  of  the  Ardennes,  then  this 
high  post  before  Maubeuge.  He  was  a  man  of  simple 
round  features  and  of  easy  mind;  he  had  but  just  been  set 
at  the  head  of  the  Army  of  the  North:  left  to  himself  he 
would  have  lost  it  —  and  his  head.  But  the  true  com- 
mander was  not  Jourdan,  it  was  Carnot.  Carnot  came  to 
represent  only  the  force  of  the  Parliament  of  which  he  was 
a  member  and  the  force  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety 
of  which  he  was  the  brain ;  but  once  on  the  field  he  exceeded 
both  these  capacities  and  became,  what  he  had  always  been, 
a  soldier.  His  big  and  ugly,  bulging  forehead  with  its  lean 
whisp  of  black  hair  hid  the  best  brain  and  overhung  the 
best  eye  for  tactics  of  all  those  that  preceded,  and  formed 
the  final  effect  of,  Napoleon's  armies. 

The  great  Carnot  in  Avesnes  that  night  stood  like  a 
wrestler  erect  and  ready,  his  arms  free,  his  hands  unclenched, 
balancing  to  clutch  the  invader  and  to  try  the  throw.  He, 
with  that  inward  vision  of  his,  saw  the  whole  plan  of  the 
struggle  from  south  to  north,  and  overlooked  the  territory 
of  the  French  people  as  a  mountain  bird  overlooks  the  Plain. 
He  knew  the  moment.  He  knew  it  not  as  a  vague,  intense, 
political  fear,  nor  even  as  a  thesis  for  the  learned  arms  and 


THE  HUNGER  OF  MAUBEUGE        501 

for  the  staff,  but  as  a  visible  and  a  real  world :  he  saw  the 
mountains  and  the  rivers,  the  white  threads  of  roads  radia- 
ting from  Paris  to  all  the  points  of  peril,  of  rebellion  or  of 
disaster ;  he  saw  the  armies  in  column  upon  them,  the  massed 
fronts,  the  guns.  He  saw  the  royal  flag  over  Toulon  and 
the  English  fleet  in  harbour  there,  he  saw  the  bush  and 
the  marsh  of  Vendee  still  unconquered,  he  saw  the  resistance 
of  Lyons  (for  he  had  no  news  of  its  surrender) ;  above  all 
he  saw  those  two  doors  against  which  the  invader  leaned, 
which  were  now  pushed  so  far  ajar  and  which  at  any  moment 
might  burst  open  —  the  lines  of  Weissembourg;  and  here, 
right  to  his  hand,  the  entrenchments  that  covered  the  last 
siege  of  the  northern  frontier.  He  saw  reeling  and  nearly 
falling,  the  body  of  the  Republic  that  was  his  religion,  and 
he  saw  that  all  the  future,  death  or  life,  lay  in  Maubeuge. 

The  Sunday  night  fell  over  Paris  and  over  those  long 
Flemish  hills.     The  morrow  was  to  see  the  beginning  of  I 
two  things :  the  trial  of  the  Queen  and  the  opening  of  a  battle  I 
which  was  to  decide  the  fate  of  the  French  people. 


XX 

WATTIGNIES 

MONDAY,  the  14th  of  October:  — 

Oct.  14,  1793.  The  fate  of  the  Queen  and  of  the  Republic 
6  a.  m.  ka(j  each  come  to  a  final  and  critical  issue  when 

the  light  broke,  dully  in  either  place,  over  Paris  and  over 
the  pastures  of  the  frontier.  There  the  army  lay  to  arms 
in  the  valley,  with  Coburg  entrenched  upon  the  ridge  above 
them,  and  beyond  him  the  last  famine  of  Maubeuge;  from 
dawn  the  French  lines  could  hear,  half  a  day's  march  to  the 
northward,  the  regular  boom  of  the  bombardment.  But 
Carnot  was  now  come. 


Oct.  14,  1793.  I*1  Paris*  when  it  was  broad  day,  the  chief 
in  Pans,  8  a.  m.  court  above  the  prison  was  prepared. 

The  populace  had  crammed  the  side  galleries  of  the  great 
room  and  were  forming  a  further  throng,  standing  in  the 
space  between  the  doors  and  the  bar.  The  five  Judges, 
Herman  the  chief,  filed  on  to  the  Bench;  a  little  below 
them,  and  on  their  right,  a  jury  of  fifteen  men  was  empan- 
elled. It  was  on  the  courage,  the  conviction,  or  the  fan- 
aticism of  these  that  the  result  would  turn. 

They  presented,  as  they  sat  there  awaiting  the  prisoner, 
a  little  model  of  the  violent  egalitarian  mood  which  had 
now  for  a  year  and  more  driven  the  military  fury  of  the 
Republic.  Among  them  would  be  seen  the  refined  and 
somewhat  degraded  face  of  a  noble  who  had  sat  in  the 

502 


WATTIGNIES  503 

earlier  Parliaments,  and  who  had  drifted  as  Orleans  had 
drifted  —  but  further  than  had  Orleans.  There  also  were 
the  unmistakable  eyes  of  precision  which  were  those  of  an 


Battle  of 

WATTIGNIES 

OCT.  is^ue^i/sa 

AND  m 
RELIEF  or  MAUBEUGE 


MAUBEUGE 


REFERENCE 

A.  Point  where  Fromentin  wns  cheeked  on  first  day  Oct.  15th 

B.  Approximate  point  at  which  the  Austrian  rally  broke  and  the  action  was 

decided  on  second  day  Oct.  16th 
1.2.34.5.  Passages  of  the  Sambre 

••—• -    Crest  of  plateau  covering  Miuibciijre  defended  by  Anstrlans 
BsBn    Anstrians  round  JIauhoimv  and  on  crest  of  plateau  on  Oct.  loth 
(  1    French  line  just  before  assault  on  Oct.  loth,  also  garrison  of  Haubengn 

-*    Reinforcements  arrived  from  French  centre  and  left  in  the  night  and  lines 

of  their  assault 

-    .•»   Austrian  retirement  on  Bridges  of  Hambrc  after  their  line  had  been 
turned  at  Wattignies  Oct.  16th 


optician,  a  maker  of  instruments.  There  were,  resting  on 
the  rail  of  the  box,  the  firm  hands  of  a  great  surgeon 
(Souberbielle).  A  few  of  the  common  people  were  mingled 


504  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

with  these:  contractors  also,  prosperous  men,  and  master- 
carpenters.  There  was  a  hatter  there,  and  a  barber,  a 
man  who  had  made  violins,  and  another  who  painted  pic- 
tures for  the  rich.  Of  such  elements  was  the  body  com- 
prised which  had  now  to  determine  so  much  in  the  history 
of  Europe.  Above  them  a  presiding  figure,  Herman  the 
Judge,  with  his  dark  aquiline  face,  controlled  them  all. 
They  looked  all  of  them  towards  the  door  that  led  from  the 
cells  below,  where  two  warders  came  upward  through  it, 
leading  between  them  the  Queen. 

She  also  as  she  entered  saw  new  things.  The  silence 
and  the  darkness  of  her  long  imprisonment  fell  from  her: 
the  noise  of  the  streets  came  in  from  the  windows  before 
her;  she  heard  the  rumour  and  she  saw  the  movement  of 
the  populace  which  —  save  for  that  brief  midnight  drive 
two  months  ago  —  had  been  quite  cut  off  from  her  since 
last  she  had  shrunk  from  the  mob  on  the  evening  when  she 
had  heard  the  gate  of  the  Temple  bolted  behind  her  car- 
riage. After  that  hush,  which  had  been  so  dreadfully 
divided  by  evil  upon  evil,  she  came  out  suddenly  into  the 
sound  of  the  city  and  into  the  general  air.  In  that  inter- 
val the  names  of  months  and  of  days,  the  mutual  saluta- 
tions of  men,  religion  and  the  very  habit  of  life  had  changed. 
In  that  interval  also  the  nation  had  passed  from  the  shock 
of  arms  to  unimagined  crimes,  to  a  most  unstable  victory, 
to  a  vision  of  defeat  and  perhaps  of  annihilation.  France 
was  astrain  upon  the  edge  of  a  final  deliverance  or  of  a 
final  and  irretrievable  disaster,  Its  last  fortress  was  all 
but  fallen,  all  its  resources  were  called  out,  all  its  men 
were  under  arms,  over  the  fate  of  the  frontier  hung  a 
dreadful,  still  silence.  In  the  very  crisis  of  this  final 
doubt  and  terror  the  Queen  stood  arraigned. 


WATTIGNIES  505 

The  women  lowered  their  knitting-needles  and  kept  them 
still.  The  little  knot  of  Commissioners  sitting  with  Counsel 
for  the  State,  the  angry  boys  in  the  crowd  who  could  remem- 
ber wounds  or  the  death  of  comrades,  stretched  forward 
to  catch  sight  of  her  as  she  came  up  the  stairs  between  her 
guards :  they  were  eager  to  note  if  there  had  been  any  change. 

She  had  preserved  her  carriage,  which  all  who  knew  her 
had  regarded  since  her  childhood  as  the  chief  expression 
of  her  soul.  She  still  moved  with  solemnity  and  with  that 
exaggerated  but  unflinching  poise  of  the  head  which,  in 
the  surroundings  of  Versailles,  had  seemed  to  some  so 
queenly,  to  others  so  affected;  which  here,  in  her  last  hours, 
seemed  to  all,  as  she  still  preserved  it,  so  defiant.  For 
the  rest  she  was  not  the  same.  Her  glance  seemed  dull 
and  full  of  weariness;  the  constant  loss  of  blood  which 
she  had  suffered  during  those  many  weeks  spent  below 
ground  had  paled  her  so  that  the  artificial,  painted  red 
of  her  cheeks  was  awful  in  that  grey  morning,  and  her 
still  ample  hair  was  ashen  and  touched  with  white,  save 
where  some  traces  of  its  old  auburn  could  be,  perhaps, 
distinguished. 

She  was  in  black.  A  little  scarf  of  lace  was  laid  with 
exactitude  about  her  shoulders  and  her  breast,  and  on  her 
head  she  wore  a  great  cap  which  a  woman  who  loved  her, 
the  same  who  had  served  her  in  her  cell,  put  on  her  as  she 
went  to  her  passion.  The  pure  white  of  this  ornament 
hung  in  great  strings  of  lawn  on  either  side,  and  round  it 
and  beneath  it  she  had  wound  the  crape  of  her  widowhood. 
So  dressed,  and  so  standing  at  the  bar,  so  watched  in  silence 
by  so  many  eyes,  she  heard  once  more  the  new  sound  which 
yesterday  she  had  first  learned  to  hate:  the  hard  and  nasal 
voice  of  Herman.  He  asked  her  formally  her  name. 


.><)<;  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Sin*  answered  in  a  voice  which  was  no  longer  strong,  but 
which  was  still  clear  and  well  heard  in  that  complete  silence: 

"Marie  Antoinette  of  Austria,  some  thirty-eight  years 
old,  willow  to  Louis  Capet,  the  King  of  France." 

To  the  second  formal  question  on  the  place  ot  her  first 
arrest,  that : 

"It  was  in  the  place  where  the  sittings  of  the  National 
Assembly  were  held." 

The  clerk,  a  man  of  no  great  learning,  wrote  his  heading: 
"The  23rd  day  of  the  lirst  month  of  the  fourth  year  of  Free- 
dom," and  when  he  had  done  this  he  noted  her  replies,  and 
Herman's  short,  questions  also:  his  bidding  to  the  jury  that 
they  must  be  linn,  to  the  prisoner  that  she  must  be  attentive. 

Into  the  clerk's  writing  there  crept,  as  there  will  into  that 
of  poor  men,  certain  grievous  errors  of  grammar  which  in  an 
earlier  (and  a  later)  time  would  not  have  appeared  in  the 
record  of  the  meanest  court  trying  a  tramp  for  hunger; 
but  it  was  the  Revolution  and  they  were  trying  a  Queen,  so 
everything  was  strange;  and  this  clerk  called  himself  Fabri- 
cius,  which  had  a  noble  sound — but  it  was  not  his  name. 

This  clerk  read  the  list  of  witnesses  and  the  indictment 
out  loud. 

When  these  formalities  were  over  they  brought  a  chair. 
The  Queen  sat  down  by  leave  of  the  court  and  the  trial 
began.  She  saw  rising  upon  her  right  a  new  figure  of  a 
kind  which  she  had  not  known  in  all  her  life  up  to  the  day 
when  the  door  of  the  prison  had  shut  her  out  from  the  noise 
and  change  of  the  world.  It  was  a  tigure  of  the  Terror, 
Fouquier  Tinville.  His  eyes  were  steadfast,  the  skin  of 
his  face  was  brown,  hard  and  strong;  he  was  a  hired  poli- 
tician, covered  with  the  politician's  outer  mask  of  firmness. 
Within  he  was  full  of  the  politician's  hesitation  and  ner- 


WATTIGNIES  507 

vous  inconstancy.  A  genuine  poverty  and  a  politician's 
hunger  for  a  salary  had  been  satisfied  by  the  post  of  Pub- 
lic Prosecutor.  He  earned  that  salary  with  zeal  and  with 
little  discernment,  and  therefore,  when  the  time  came, 
he  also  was  condemned  to  die.  It  was  he  now  in  this  fore- 
noon who  opened  against  the  Queen. 

His  voice  was  harsh  and  mechanical :  his  speech  was  long, 
dull,  and  violent:  rhetorical  with  that  scenic  and  cardboard 
rhetoric  which  is  the  official  commonplace  of  all  tribunals. 
The  Widow  Capet  was  Messalina;  she  was  a  leech;  she  was 
a  Merovingian  Tyrant;  she  was  a  Medicis.  She  had  held 
relations  with  the  "Man  called  King"  of  Bohemia  and 
Hungary;  she  had  urged  Capet  on  to  all  his  crimes.  She 
had  sent  millions  to  aid  her  family  in  their  war  against 
the  French  people.  She  had  woven  the  horrid  plot  of  the 
10th  of  August,  which  nothing  but  incredible  valour  had 
defeated.  She  was  the  main  enemy  which  the  new  and  angry 
Freedom  for  which  he  spoke  had  had  to  meet  and  to  conquer. 

Apart  from  its  wearisome  declamation  the  accusation 
was  true;  save  that  —  through  no  fault  of  her  own,  poor 
woman !  —  she  had  not  aided  the  foreign  cause  with  gold, 
all  the  story  was  evident  and  publicly  known.  She  sat  as 
near  this  orator  as  is  a  nurse  to  a  bedside.  She  heard  him 
with  her  suffering  and  disdainful  face  quite  fixed  and 
unmoved,  save  at  one  point:  the  mention  of  her  son. 

Fouquier  Tinville  was  sane:  he  saw  the  crass  absurdity 
of  Hebert's  horrors,  he  barely  touched  upon  them  very 
hurriedly  (and  as  the  rapid  and  confused  words  escaped 
him,  her  lips  twitched  with  pain),  but  even  as  he  did  so,  he 
knew  he  had  given  the  defence  a  hold. 

It  is  held  on  principle  in  French  Courts  that  an  impar-  \ 
tial  presentation  of  the  truth  cannot  be  obtained  unless  J 


508  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

witnesses  are  heard  in  a  chance  sequence,  not  divided  into 
friends  and  foes,  as  with  us,  but  each  (such  is  the 
theory)  telling  what  he  believes  to  be  the  truth.  Even  in 
these  political  trials  of  the  Terror  (which  were  rather 
Courts -martial  or  condemnations  than  trials)  the  rule  was 
observed,  and  when  Fouquier  sat  down  the  file  of  wit- 
nesses began. 

The  parade  was  futile.  For  plain  political  facts  known 
to  the  whole  world  no  list  of  witnesses  was  needed,  nor 
could  their  evidence  be  of  the  least  avail.  Moreover, 
that  evidence  was  lacking.  The  witnesses  defiled  one 
after  the  other,  each  vaguer  than  the  last,  to  prove  (and 
failing  to  prove)  things  that  were  commonplaces  to  all 
Europe.  Long  past  midday  the  empty  procession  contin- 
ued through  the  drowsy  hours  past  one  o'clock  and  two; 
remembering  trifles  of  her  conduct  true  and  false.  To  every 
assertion  as  the  Judge  repeated  it  (true  or  false),  she! 
answered  quietly  by  a  denial;  that  denial  was  now  false,] 
now  true. 

Even  if  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  could  have  subpoenaed 
Mallet  or  the  Emperor  or  Fersen,  it  would  have  meant 
little  to  the  result.  Her  guilt,  if  it  was  guilt  so  to  scheme 
against  the  nation,  was  certain;  what  yet  remained  in  doubt 
was  the  political  necessity  of  such  a  trial  at  such  a  mo- 
ment, the  limit  of  hardihood  in  her  Judges  and  the  possible 
effect  in  a  democracy  of  public  sympathy  at  some  critical 
phase  of  the  pleadings  —  and  much  more  potent  than  any 
of  these  three,  because  it  included  them  all,  was  the  news 
that  might  come  at  any  moment  from  the  frontier  and  from 
the  hunger  of  Maubeuge  —  no  news  came. 

Last  of  these  witnesses  Hebert,  all  neat  and  powdered, 
presented  his  documents  and  put  forward  his  abomina- 


WATTIGNIES  509 

tions,  his  fixed  idea  of  incest.  The  public  disgust  might  I 
here  have  turned  the  trial.  There  was  a  stir  all  round: 
her  friends  began  to  hope.  As  for  the  officials,  they  could 
not  stop  Hebert's  mouth,  but  Herman  was  careful  to  omit 
the  customary  repetition:  he  was  hurrying  on  to  the  next 
witness  when  a  juryman  of  less  wit  than  his  fellows  and  filled 
with  the  enormous  aberrations  of  hate,  pressed  the  charge. 

The  Queen  would  not  reply.  She  half  rose  from  her 
chair  and  cried  in  a  high  voice:  "I  appeal  to  every  mother 
here,"  and  then  sank  back  again. 

The  crowd  in  the  galleries  began  to  move  and  murmur, 
the  women  raised  their  voices  against  the  angry  orders  of 
the  ushers  and  of  the  Bench  demanding  silence.  Away, 
dining  beyond  the  Seine,  Robespierre,  hearing  of  it,  broke 
a  plate  at  table  in  his  anger,  and  thought  Hebert's  lunacy 
had  saved  her.  A  further  witness,  though  he  spoke  of  the 
flight  to  Varennes,  could  hardly  be  heard,  and  spoke  quite 
unheeded;  and  when  he  had  concluded,  the  Court  abruptly 
rose  in  the  midst  of  the  commotion,  hubbub  and  change. 

The  Queen  was  led  to  her  cell,  keeping,  as  she  left  her 
place,  in  spite  of  her  hopeless  fatigue,  the  steady  step  where- 
with she  had  entered;  and  as  she  passed  she  heard  one  woman 
in  the  press  sneering  at  her  pride. 

It  was  three  o'clock.  The  first  act  in  that  long  agony 
had  lasted,  without  food  or  breathing  time,  for  seven  hours. 


While  the  Republic  thus  held  the  old  world  prisoner  in 
Paris,  and  tortured  it  in  the  person  of  the  Queen, 
out  on  the  frontier  in   the  water-meadows  of     Before '  Mau- 
Avesnes,  the  Republic  lay  in  its  chief  peril  from 
the  old  world  free  and  armed.     Coburg  and  every  privilege 


510  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

held  the  crest  of  the  hills  invincibly,  and  Maubeuge  was 
caught  fast,  unreachable  beyond  the  entrenchments  of 
that  ridge. 

Carnot,  looking  westward  down  the  valley  of  the  Helpe, 
saw  the  deep  orchards  laden  with  October,  nourished  by 
the  small  and  very  winding  stream.  He  saw  the  last 
French  frontier  hamlets  and  their  mills.  St.  Hilaire, 
Dompierre,  Tenieres,  dwindling  away  to  where,  far  off 
in  its  broad  trench,  ran  the  Sambre. 

Before  him  also  in  this  valley,  as  he  looked  westward 
down  it,  he  saw  stretched  for  some  ten  miles  the  encamp- 
ment of  his  army:  bivouac  after  bivouac,  one  beyond  the 
other  along  the  lines,  and  smoke  rising  from  them.  Tall 
hedges,  not  yet  bare,  divided  the  floor  of  the  valley  and  the 
village  grounds:  here,  also,  Csesar  had  marched  through 
against  the  Nervii:  for  this  corner  of  Europe  is  a  pack 
of  battlefields.  Malplaquet  lay  just  before  the  army; 
within  a  march,  Fleurus;  within  sound  of  cannon, 
Jemappes. 

Up  above  them  beyond  that  wood  of  Avesnes,  the  line 
of  the  heights  along  the  sky,  was  the  enemy.  It  had  loomed 
so  dark  before  the  late,  dull  and  rainy  dawn,  that  they  had 
seen  the  notches  in  that  line  which  were  the  emplacement 
of  guns.  The  early  afternoon  had  shone  upon  the  sides 
of  the  hills,  and  the  French  outposts  had  seen  the  outposts 
of  the  evening  busy  in  the  little  villages  that  mark  the  foot 
of  the  slopes:  St.  Vaast,  Dourlers,  Foursies.  And  all  day 
long  boomed  to  the  north  behind  the  hills  the  sullen  guns 
before  Maubeuge.  At  any  hour  that  dull  repeated  sound 
might  cease,  and  it  would  mean  that  the  last  fortress  had 
fallen. 

All   that   day   Carnot  passed   in   silence.     The   troops, 


WATTIGNIES  511 

some  last  detachments  of  which  had  but  just  marched  in, 
lay  dully  in  such  repose  as  soldiers  can  steal:  a  jumble 
of  forty  patchwork  battalions,  militia,  regulars,  loud  vol- 
unteers, old  stark  gunners;  they  listened  to  the  distant  and 
regular  thunder  of  the  siege.  In  some  stations  the  few 
horses  were  grooming:  in  others,  fewer  still,  the  rare  guns 
were  cleaned. 

An  hour  before  dusk  the  six  generals  were  called  to  Car- 
not's  tent,  and  here  and  there  the  bugles  roused 
the  troops  called  for  reconnaissance.   These  few    Before  Mau- 
detachments  crossed  the  woods,  pierced  gaps  in 
the  hedges,1  to  prepare  the  advance  of  the  morrow,  noted 
and  exchanged  shots  with  the  outposts  of  the  evening,  and 
at  evening  they  retired.    As  they  retired  Carnot  gave  orders 
to  the  guns.     Out  of  effective  range,  vague  and  careless  of 
a  target,  they  fired  and  proclaimed  the  presence  of  a  reliev- 
ing army  to  the  besieged. 

Maubeuge,  in  that  still  evening,  during  a  lull  of  the 
siege-pieces,  heard  those  French  guns,  and  Ferrant  and  the 
general  officers  with  him  counselled  a  sortie.  Only 
Chancel  stood  out,  but  Chancel  was  in  command  of  the 
camp  of  Maubeuge,  and  his  authority  was  unassailable. 
He  did  not  distinguish  the  French  fire,  he  thought  it  Aus- 
trian; no  instinct  moved  him.  Therefore,  all  the  next 
day,  while  the  battle  was  engaged,  the  garrison  of  Maubeuge 
failed  to  move;  and  later,  for  this  error,  Chancel  was  tried 
and  killed.3 

The  troops  fell  back  again  through  the  wood  of 
Avesnes  and  slept  the  last  sleep  before  the  battle.  In 

1  So  on  the  same  field  had  Caesar  been  compelled  to  clear  the  hedgerows.   So  little  does  the  French  peasantry 
change  in  a  thousand  years,  and  so  tenacious  is  each  French  province  of  its  customs. 
a  And  the  other  version  is  that  Chancel  was  for  moving  but  that  Ferrant  would  not.    Choose. 


512  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Paris   during   that   same   evening,    the   long   trial    of    the 
Queen  proceeded. 


Oct.  17, 1793.  At  five,  just  at  that  hour  when  Carnot  was 
in  Paris,  5  p.  m.  recalling  his  scouts  and  ordering  that  warning 
cannon,  the  Court  gathered  and  the  prisoner  was  recalled. 

In  her  cell  she  had  not  been  silent. 

As  a  great  actress  in  an  interval  between  her  hardest 
lines  will  refuse  repose  and  will  demand  rather  comment 
or  praise,  so  had  she  filled  this  little  respite  of  two  hours 
with  questions  and  with  doubts  professed.  She  had  dwelt 
upon  the  forms  of  the  trial,  she  had  begged  her  counsel  to 
reassure  her.  She  had  despised  the  evidence.  She  had 
said  she  feared  but  one  witness  —  Manuel  —  and  indeed 
all  who  could  have  spoken  as  eye-witnesses  to  a  hundred 
notorious  truths  were  now  over  the  frontier  or  dead. 

With  her  entry  the  trial  was  resumed  and  the  file  of  wit- 
nesses continued.  It  was  as  monotonous  and  as  vague 
as  before.  Even  Manuel,  whom  she  had  feared,  was  vague, 
and  the  very  servants  of  the  prison  (though  they  had  been 
witnesses  to  conspiracy)  were  uncertain  and  rambling. 
And  this  fatuity  of  the  witnesses,  who  were  so  solemnly 
and  so  strictly  examined,  did  not  proceed  from  the  tur- 
moil of  the  time  alone,  nor  even  from  the  certitude  which 
all  then  had  (and  which  history  has  now)  upon  the  past 
action  of  the  Queen  in  cherishing  the  hope  of  foreign  domi- 
nation and  in  procuring  it:  rather  did  it  proceed  from  the 
fact  that  these  dreadful  days  were  filled  not  with  a  judicial 
but  with  a  political  action,  and  that  the  Court  was  met, 
not  to  establish  truths  at  once  unprovable  and  glaring, 
but  to  see  whether  or  no  the  Revolution  could  dare  to  con- 


WATTIGNIES  513 

demn  the  prisoner.  It  was  an  act  of  War  and  a  challenge 
to  What  lay  entrenched  up  there  before  Maubeuge,  train- 
ing its  guns  on  the  last  hope,  the  ragged  army  in  the  valley 
of  Avesnes  below. 

If  all  the  witnesses  which  history  possesses  to-day,  if 
Boville,  Fersen,  Mallet,  could  have  been  brought  into  that 
Court  and  have  had  the  Truth  dragged  from  them,  it  would 
have  affected  the  issue  very  little.  One  thing  could  alone 
affect  that  issue,  the  news  of  victory:  and  no  news  came. 
All  reports  from  the  frontier  had  ceased. 

The  lights  in  the  Court  were  lit,  smoky  and  few.  The 
air,  already  foul  from  the  large  concourse,  grew  heavy 
even  for  the  free;  for  the  sickened  prisoner  it  became 
intolerable  as  the  night  hours  drew  in  —  six  dark,  inter- 
minable hours.  She  heard  the  succeeding  witnesses  distantly, 
more  distantly.  Her  head  was  troubled, and  her  injured  eye- 
sight failed  her.  It  was  very  late.  The  droning  of  the  night 
was  in  her  ears.  She  vaguely  knew  at  last  that  there  was 
a  movement  around  her  and  that  the  Court  was  rising. 
She  asked  faintly  for  water.  Busne,  the  officer  in  guard 
of  her,  brought  it  to  her  and  she  drank.  As  he  supported 
her  with  some  respect  down  the  short  passage  to  her  cell 
he  heard  her  murmuring:  "I  cannot  see.  ...  I  can- 
not see.  ...  I  have  come  to  the  end.  .  .  ." 

She  lay  down  when  her  doors  had  received  her,  and  just 
before  midnight  she  fell  asleep.  She  slept  deeply,  and 
for  the  last  time. 


Tuesday,  October  15. 

A  little  before  dawn  the  French  bugles  upon  the  frontier 
roused  the  troops  of  Avesnes;  their  calls  ran  down  the  line, 


514  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

they  passed  from  the  Diane  to  the   Generale,  the  woods 
before   them   sent   back  echoes,  and   soon  the 

UCtt    10,    17t)d. 

Before  Mau-  army  moved.  Far  off  upon  the  left  Fromentin, 
upon  the  far  right  Duquesnoy,  began  marching 
forwards  and  inwards  converging,  but  the  main  body  in  the 
centre  took  the  high  road,  which,  if  it  could  force  its  pass- 
age, would  lead  them  straight  to  Maubeuge. 

The  sun  was  still  level  over  the  glinting  wet  fields  when 
Carnot  came  to  the  summit  of  the  long  swell  whence  could 
be  perceived,  over  an  intervening  hollow,  the  village  .of 
Dourlers,  and  above  it  the  level  fringe  of  trees  which  held 
the  Austrian  cannon;  an  impregnable  crest  upon  whose 
security  Coburg  and  the  Allies  founded  the  certitude  of 
victory.  The  guns  began. 

Among  the  batteries  of  the  French  (too  few  for  their 
task),  two  batteries,  one  of  sixteen-pounders,  the  other  of 
twelve,  were  the  gift  of  the  city  of  Paris.  By  some  acci- 
dent these,  though  ill-manned,  silenced  the  Austrian  fire 
at  one  critical  and  central  point  above  Dourlers  itself  and 
close  to  the  highroad.  Whether  the  French  aptitude  for 
this  arm  had  helped  to  train  the  volunteers  of  the  city,  or 
whether  these  had  such  a  leaven  of  trained  men  as  suf- 
ficed to  turn  the  scale,  or  whether  (as  is  more  probable) 
some  error  or  difficulty  upon  the  opposing  slope  or  some 
chance  shot  had  put  the  invaders  out  of  action,  cannot 
be  known.  Carnot  seized  upon  the  moment  and  ordered 
the  charge.  As  his  columns  advanced  to  carry  Dourlers 
he  sent  word  at  full  speed  to  either  wing  that  each 
must  time  itself  by  the  centre,  arid  forbade  an  advance 
upon  the  left  or  right  until  the  high  road  should  be 
forced  and  the  centre  of  the  Austrian  position  pierced 
or  confused. 


WATTIGNIES  515 

As  he  stood  there,  looking  down  from  the  height  where 
the  road  bifurcates,  all  the  battle  was  plain  to  him,  but  his 
sapper's  eye  for  a  plan  watched  the  wings  much  more 
anxiously  than  they  watched  the  centre  before  him.  The 
stunted  spire  of  Wattignies  a  long  way  off  to  the  east, 
the  clump  that  hid  St.  Remy  to  the  west,  marked  strong 
bodies  of  the  enemy,  and,  in  the  open  plateau  beyond, 
their  numerous  cavalry  could  crush  either  extremity  of  his 
line  (which  at  either  extremity  was  weak)  should  either  be 
tempted  forward  before  the  centre  had  succeeded.  The 
front  was  long  —  over  five  miles  —  he  could  not  enforce 
sagacity  nor  even  be  certain  of  intelligence,  and  as  he 
doubted  and  feared  the  action  of  his  distant  lieutenants, 
he  saw  the  centre  advancing  beneath  his  eyes. 

The  Austrian  cannon  had  abandoned  the  duel.  The 
French  line  approached  Dourlers,  deployed,  and  began  the 
ascent.  A  sudden  and  heavy  fire  of  musketry  from  the 
hollow  road  and  from  the  hedges  met  the  sixteen  thousand 
as  they  charged;  they  did  not  waver,  they  reached  the 
garden  walls,  and  closed  until,  to  those  watching  from  the 
hill,  the  attempt  was  confused  and  hidden  by  a  rolling 
smoke  and  the  clustered  houses  of  the  village.  It  was  past 
mid-morning. 


In  Paris  they  had  wakened  the  Queen,  tardily. 
She  wondered,  perhaps,  to  see  De  Busne  not  there.     He 
had  suffered  arrest  in  the  night,   he  was   de- 

Oct.  15,  1793. 

tained  to  see  if   he  could  tell  the  Court  or  the    in  Pans, 
Committee  some  secret  gathered  from  his  pris- 
oner.    It  was  under  another  guard  that  she  left  her  cell. 
It  was  nearly  nine  before  the  Court  assembled  in  the 


516  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

dull  light,  and  later  before  the  futile  drag  of  evidence  was 
renewed. 

Whether  sleep  had  revived  her,  or  whether  some  rem- 
nant of  her  old  energy  had  returned  to  her  for  such  an 
occasion,  no  further  weakness  was  perceived  in  the  Queen. 
She  sat,  as  she  had  sat  all  the  day  before,  until  her  faint- 
ness  had  come  upon  her,  very  ill,  pale,  and  restrained, 
but  erect  and  ready  for  every  reply.  Moreover,  in  that 
morning  the  weary  monotony  of  such  hours  was  broken 
by  an  incident  which  illuminated,  though  it  made  more 
bitter,  the  last  of  her  sad  days;  for  after  D'Estaing,  the 
Admiral,  had  been  heard  to  no  purpose,  another  noble, 
also  a  prisoner,  was  called;  and  as  she  saw  his  face  she 
remembered  better  times,  when  the  struggle  was  keen  and 
not  hopeless,  and  when  this  bewildering  Beast,  that  called 
itself  now  "Freedom,"  now  "The  Nation,"  had  been 
tamed  by  the  class  which  still  governed  Europe  outside 
and  which  in  that  day  controlled  her  kingdom  also.  It 
was  Latour  du  Pin,  the  soldier  who  had  been  responsible 
for  the  repression  of  the  mutiny  at  Nancy,  three  years  — 
three  centuries  —  before. 

He  still  lived.  Against  no  man  had  '93  a  better  ground 
for  hate,  and  indeed  the  time  came  when  the  Revolution 
sent  him  down  also  to  meet  his  victims  under  the  earth; 
but  so  far  his  commanding  head  was  firm  upon  his  shoul- 
ders. He  enjoyed,  as  did  all  the  prisoners  of  that  time, 
the  full  use  of  his  wealth.  He  was  clothed,  and  fed  in  the 
manner  of  his  rank.  He  entered,  therefore,  with  pride, 
and  with  that  mixture  of  gaiety  and  courage,  upon  which, 
since  the  wars  of  religion,  all  his  kind  had  justly  plumed 
themselves;  and  as  he  entered  he  bowed  with  an  exces- 
sive ceremony  to  the  Queen. 


WATTIGNIES  517 

The  Judge  asked  him  the  formal  question:  Whether 
he  recognised  the  prisoner?  He  bowed  again  and 
answered:  "Indeed  I  know  this  Lady  very  well";  and  in  a 
few  moments  of  his  examination  he  defended  himself  and 
her  with  a  disdainful  ease  that  brought  Versailles  back 
vividly  out  of  its  tomb. 

Revived  or  stung  by  such  a  memory,  the  Queen  replied 
to  question  after  question  exactly  and  even  with  some 
power:  upon  her  frivolities,  her  expenses,  her  Trianon  — 
all  the  legends  of  debauch  which  were  based  upon  that 
very  real  and  very  violent  fugue  of  pleasure  in  which  she  had 
wasted  her  brilliant  years.  The  close  of  that  dialogue  alone 
has  a  strict  interest  for  history,  when  Herman  came  at  last 
to  the  necklace.  Trianon  had  been  on  his  lips  a  dozen 
times,  and  as  he  spoke  the  word  he  remembered  that  other 
fatal  thing:  — 

"Was  it  not  in  Trianon  that  you  first  came  to  know  the 
woman  La  Motte  ?" 

"I  never  saw  her!" 

"Was  she  not  your  victim  in  the  affair  of  the  necklace  ?" 

"She  could  not  be,  for  I  had  never  known  her!" 

"You  still  deny  it?" 

"I  have  no  plan  to  deny.  It  is  the  truth,  and  I  shall 
always  say  the  same." 

It  is  a  passage  of  great  moment,  for  here  indeed  the  pris- 
oner said  precisely  what  was  true  and  precisely  what  all, 
even  those  who  would  befriend  her,  least  believed  to  be  true. 
She  would  pretend  a  love  for  the  French  and  a  keen  regard 
for  their  glory  —  even  for  the  success  of  their  armies. 
She  would  pretend  to  have  obeyed  the  King  and  not  to 
have  led  him;  to  have  desired  nothing  for  her  son  but  only 
the  welfare  of  the  people.  Trapped  and  abandoned, 


518  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

she  thought  every  answer,  however  false,  legitimate;  but 
in  that  one  thing  in  which  her  very  friends  had  doubted 
her,  another  spirit  possessed  her  and  her  words  were 
alive  with  truth. 

After  that  episode  no  further  movement  followed.  There 
was  opened  before  the  Court  (as  the  law  compelled)  her 
little  pocket  and  the  trinkets  taken  from  her  on  the  day 
of  her  imprisonment :  the  poor  relics  of  her  affection — the 
lock  of  hair,  the  miniature  —  were  laid  before  the  Judges. 
They  heard  Simon,  the  cobbler,  in  whose  house  her  son 
was  lodged  —  perhaps  she  looked  more  curiously  at  his 
face  than  at  others --but  he  had  nothing  to  say.  They 
heard  the  porter  of  the  Temple  and  sundry  others  who  had 
seen,  or  pretended  to  have  seen,  her  orders  for  the  pay- 
ments of  sundry  thousands  —  but  all  that  business  was 
empty  and  all  those  hours  were  wasted:  it  was  not  upon 
such  vanities  that  the  mind  of  Paris  and  of  the  crowded 
Court  was  turned,  but  upon  the  line  of  Flemish  hills  a  long 
way  off  and  upon  the  young  men  climbing  up  against 
the  guns. 

Paris  and  the  mob  in  the  street  outside  that  Court  of  Jus- 
tice and  the  hundreds  crammed  within  it  strained  to 
hear,  not  Valaze,  nor  Tiset,  nor  any  other  useless  witness 
but  some  first  breath  of  victory  that  might  lift  off  them  the 
oppression  of  those  days;  nay,  some  roaring  news  of  defeat, 
and  of  Coburg  marching  upon  them:  then,  at  least, 
before  their  vision  was  scattered  by  the  invader,  they 
could  tear  this  Austrian  woman  from  her  too  lenient  Judges 
for  a  full  vengeance  before  they  themselves  and  that  which 
they  had  achieved  should  die.  At  the  best  or  at  the  worst, 
they  panted  for  a  clear  knowledge  of  their  fortune;  but  on 
through  the  day  and  well  into  the  afternoon,  when  the/ 


WATTIGNIES  519 

Court  rose  for  its  brief  interval,  no  hint  or  rumour  even  had 
come  to  Paris  from  before  Maubeuge. 


Carnot  had  come  down  the  hill  from  the  fork  of  the 
roads;  he,  and  Jourdon  beside  him,  followed 

....  Oct.  15,  1793. 

behind  the  assault,  bringing  the  headquarters     Before  Maubeuge, 
of  that  general  plan  some  half-mile  forward. 
So  they  knew  that  the  village  of  Dourlers  was  held.    It  was 
noon  before  the  place  was  secured,  and  now  all  depended 
upon  the  action  of  the  extreme  wings. 

It  was  certain  that  the  struggle  for  this  central  village 
would  be  desperate:  all  depended  upon  the  extreme  wings. 
If  these  (and  both  of  them)  could  hold  hard  and  neither 
advance  too  far  up  the  slope  nor  suffer  (either  of  them) 
a  beating-in,  then  the  work  at  Dourlers  would  be  decisive. 
And,  indeed,  the  village  was  won,  lost,  and  won,  and  lost 
again:  all  the  hard  work  was  there.  The  French  carried  it, 
they  went  beyond,  they  were  almost  upon  the  ridge  above 
it.  In  the  upland  field  below  the  crest  of  wood  the  Aus- 
trian cavalry  under  Muffling  struck  them  in  flank,  and 
they  were  disordered.  They  were  back  in  the  village  of 
Dourlers,  and  the  fight  for  it  was  from  house  to  house  and 
from  window  to  window.  Twice  it  was  cleared,  twice  lost. 
The  French  carry  to  an  immortal  memory  a  lad  of  four- 
teen who  slipped  forward  in  those  attacks,  got  in  behind 
the  lines  of  the  Hungarian  Grenadiers  who  held  the  market 
place,  and,  in  lanes  beyond,  drummed  the  charge  to  make 
his  comrades  think  that  some  were  already  so  far  for- 
ward, and  thus  to  urge  them  on.  Many  years  after,  in 
digging  up  that  ground,  his  little  bones  were  found  buried 
sidelong  with  the  bones  of  the  tall  Hungarian  men;  and 


520  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

he  has  now  his  statue  beating  the  charge  and  looking  out 
towards  the  frontier  from  the  gateways  of  Avesnes. 

I  have  said  that  the  horns  of  that  crescent,  the  extreme 
wings,  were  ordered  to  be  cautious,  and  warned  that  their 
caution  alone  could  save  the  fight;  for  if  they  went  too  far 
while  Dourlers  in  the  centre  was  still  doubtful,  that  centre 
would  certainly  be  thrown  back  by  such  a  general  as 
Coburg,  who  knew  very  well  the  breaking-point  of  a  con- 
cave line.  The  fourth  attack  upon  Dourlers  was  prepared 
and  would  have  succeeded  when  Carnot  heard  that  Fro- 
mentin,  upon  the  far  left,  upon  the  extreme  tip  of  the  horn 
of  that  crescent,  had  carried  his  point  of  the  ridge,  and, 
having  carried  it,  had  had  the  folly  to  pursue ;  he  had  found 
himself  upon  the  plateau  above  (an  open  plateau  bare  of 
trees  and  absolutely  bare  of  cover),  with  his  irregulars  all 
boiling,  and  his  regulars  imagining  success.  Weak  in  cavalry, 
commanding  men  untrained  to  any  defensive,  he  found 
opposed  to  him  the  cavalry  reserve  of  the  enemy  —  a  vast 
front  of  horse  suddenly  charging.  That  cavalry  smashed 
him  all  to  pieces.  His  regulars  here  and  there  formed 
squares,  his  irregulars  tried  to,  they  were  sabred  and  gal- 
loped down.  They  lost  but  four  guns  (though  four  counted 
in  so  undergunned  an  army),  but,  much  worse,  they  lost 
their  confidence  altogether.  They  got  bunched  into  the 
combes  and  hollows,  the  plateau  was  cleared.  They  in 
their  turn  were  pursued,  and  it  would  have  been  a  rout  but 
for  two  accidents:  the  first  accident  was  the  presence  of  a 
fresh  reserve  of  French  cavalry ;  small  indeed,  but  very  well 
disciplined,  strict  and  ready,  certain  Hussars  who  in 
a  red  flash  (their  uniform  was  red)  charged  on  their 
little  horses  and  for  a  moment  stopped  the  flood  of  the 
enemy.  The  check  so  given  saved  the  lives  though  not 


WATTIGNIES  521 

the  position  of  the  French  left  wing.      It  was  beaten.      It 
was  caved  in. 

The  second  accident  was  the  early  close  of  an  October 
day.  The  drizzling  weather,  the  pall  of  clouds,  curtained 
in  an  early  night,  and  the  left  thus  failing  were  not  wholly 
destroyed:  but  their  failure  had  ruined  the  value  of  the 
central  charge  upon  Dourlours.  The  final  attack  upon 
that  central  village  was  countermanded;  the  Austrians 
did  not,  indeed,  pursue  the  retreat  of  the  French  centre 
from  its  walls  and  lanes,  but  the  conception  of  the  battle 
had  failed. 


In  the  Court-room,  in  Paris,  during  those  hours,  while 
the  Judges  raised  the  sitting,  the  Queen  sat     Oct.  is,  1793. 
waiting  for  their  return ;  they   brought  her    In  Pan8f  6  p* m* 
soup  which  she  drank;  the  evening  darkened,  the  Judges 
reappeared,  and  the  trial  began  anew. 

The  witnesses  called  upon  that  last  evening,  when  the 
lights  were  lit  and  the  long  night  had  begun,  were  for  the 
most  part  those  who  had  come  personally  into  the  pres- 
ence or  into  the  service  of  the  Queen.  Michonis  especially, 
who  was  rightly  under  arrest  for  attempting  her  rescue, 
appeared;  Bruiner  appeared;  the  doctor  who  had  attended 
to  the  children  in  the  Temple.  The  farce  went  on.  The 
night  grew  deeper,  the  witnesses  succeeded  each  other. 
All  that  they  had  to  say  was  true.  Nothing  they  said  could 
be  proved.  One  put  forward  that  she  had  written  some 
note  asking  if  the  Swiss  could  be  relied  upon  to  shoot  down 
the  people.  She  had  said  and  written  one  hundred  of  such 
things.  Her  counsel,  who  were  mere  lawyers,  worried  about 
the  presentation  of  the  document  —  meanwhile  night 


\ 


522  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

hastened  onwards,  and  the  stars  behind  their  veil  of  an 
October  cloud  continually  turned. 

•  ••••••• 

Upon  the  frontier  the  damp  evening  and  the  closed  night 
had  succeeded  one  the  other,  and  all  along  the 

Oct.  15,  1793. 

Before  Maubeuge,  valley  of  the  little  river  it  was  foggy  and  dark. 
The  dead  lay  twisted  where  they  had  fallen 
during  that  unwrought  fight,  and  a  tent  pitched  just 
behind  the  lines  held  the  staff  and  Carnot.  He  did 
not  sleep.  There  was  brought  to  him  in  those  mid- 
night hours  a  little  note,  galloped  in  from  the  far  south; 
he  read  it  and  crumpled  it  away.  It  is  said  to  have  been  the 
news  that  the  lines  of  Weissembourg  were  forced  —  and  so 
they  were.  The  Prussians  were  free  to  pass  those  gates 
between  the  Ardennes  and  the  Vosges.  Then  Mau- 
beuge was  the  last  hold  remaining :  the  very  last  of  all. 

Jourdan  proposed,  in  that  decisive  Council  of  a  few 
moments,  held  under  that  tent  by  lantern  light  in  the  foggy 
darkness  while  the  day  of  their  defeat  was  turning  into  the 
morrow,  some  plan  for  reinforcing  the  defeated  left  and  of 
playing  some  stalemate  of  check  and  countercheck  against 
the  enemy;  but  Carnot  was  big  with  new  things.  He 
conceived  an  adventure  possible  only  from  his  knowledge 
of  what  he  commanded;  he  dismissed  the  mere  written  tradi- 
tions of  war  which  Jourdan  quoted  because  he  knew  that 
now — and  within  twelve  hours — all  must  certainly  be  lost  or 
won.  He  took  counsel  with  his  own  great  soul,  and  called, 
from  within  his  knowledge  of  the  French,  upon  the  savagery 
and  the  laughter  of  the  French  service.  He  knew  what 
abominable  pain  his  scheme  must  determine.  He  knew  by 
what  wrench  of  discipline  or  rather  of  cruelty  the  thing  must 


WATTIGNIES  523 

be  done,  but  more  profoundly  did  he  know  the  temper  of 
young  French  people  under  arms  to  whom  the  brutality  of 
superiors  is  native  and  who  meet  it  by  some  miraculous 
reserve  of  energy  and  of  rebellious  smiles. 

Those  young  French  people,  many  half -mutinous,  most 
of  them  ill-clothed,  so  many  wounded,  so  many  more  palsied 
by  the  ap^)ach  of  death  —  all  drenched  under  the  October 
drizzle,  all  by  this  time  weary  of  any  struggle  whatsoever,  were 
roused  in  that  night  before  their  sleep  was  deep  upon  them. 

Carnot  had  determined  to  choose  7,000,  to  forbid  them 
rest,  to  march  them  right  along  his  positions  and  add  them 
to  the  8,000  on  his  right  extreme  wing,  and  then  at  morning, 
if  men  so  treated  could  still  charge,  to  charge  with  such 
overwhelming  and  unexpected  forces  on  the  right,  where  no 
such  effort  was  imagined,  and  so  turn  the  Austrian  line. 

There  were  no  bugle-calls,  no  loud  voice  was  permitted ; 
but  all  the  way  down  the  valley  for  five  miles  orders  were 
given  by  patrols  whose  men  had  not  slept  for  thirty  hours. 
They  roused  the  volunteers  and  the  cursing  regulars  from 
the  first  beginnings  of  their  sleep ;  they  broke  into  the  paltry 
comfort  of  chance  bivouac  fires ;  they  routed  men  out  of  the 
straw  in  barns  and  stables;  they  kicked  up  the  half-dead, 
half-sleeping  boys  who  lay  in  the  wet  grass  marshes  of  the 
Tarsy;  and  during  all  that  night  by  the  strength  which  only 
this  service  has  found  it  possible  to  conceive  (I  mean  a 
mixture  of  the  degrading  and  the  exalted,  of  servitude  and  of 
vision),  from  the  centre  and  from  the  left — from  the  men 
who  were  shot  down  before  Dourlers  and  from  the  men  who 
had  fled  before  the  Austrian  cavalry  when  Fromentin  had 
failed — a  corps  was  gathered  together,  under  the  thick  night, 
drawn  up  in  column  and  bidden  march  through  the  dark- 
ness by  the  lane  that  led  towards  the  right  of  the  position. 


524  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

With  what  deep-rooted  hatred  of  commandment  simmer- 
ing in  them,  those  fellows  went  after  thirty  hours  of  use- 
less struggle  to  yet  another  unknown  blind  attempt, 
not  historians  but  only  men  who  have  suffered  such 
orders  know.  They  were  7,000;  the  thick  night,  I 
say,  was  upon  them;  the  mist  lay  heavy  all  over  the  wet 
land;  and  as  they  went  through  the  brushwood  tod  chance 
trees  that  separated  the  centre  from  the  right  of  the  French 
position,  they  heard  the  drip  of  water  from  the  dead,  hanging 
leaves.  Their  agony  seemed  to  them  quite  wanton  and 
purposeless.  They  were  halted  at  last  mechanically,  like 
sheep,  at  various  points  under  various  sleeping  farms  in 
various  deserted  tiny,  lightless  villages.  The  night  was  far 
spent;  they  could  but  squat,  despairing,  each  company  at 
its  halting-place  waiting  for  the  dawn  and  for  new  shambles. 
Meanwhile  it  was  thick  night. 


It  was  nearing  midnight  in  Paris,  but  none  yet  felt  fatigue, 
neither  the  Judges  nor  their  prisoner;   nor  did 

Oct.  15,1793. 

in  Pans,  any  in  the  straining  audience  that  watched  the 

11.30p.m.  slow  determination  of  this  business  suffer  the 
approach  of  sleep.  The  list  of  the  witnesses  was  done  and 
their  tale  was  ended. 

Herman    leant    forward,    hawk-faced,    and     asked    the 

Queen  in  the  level  judicial  manner  if  she  had  anything  to 

add  to  her  defence  before  her  advocates  should  plead.     She 

answered   complaining   of   the   little   time   that   had   been 

[  afforded  her  to  defend  —  and  the  last  words  she  spoke  to 

I  her  Judges  were  still  a  vain  repetition  that  she  had  acted  only 

I  as  the  wife  of  the  King  and  that  she  had  but  obeyed  his  will. 

The  Bench  declared  the  examination  of  the    witnesses 


WATTIGNIES  525 

closed.     For  something  like   an  hour  that  bronzed   and 
hollow-faced  man  next  by  her,  Fouquier  Tinville,  put  for- 
ward the  case  for  the  Government;  he  was  careful  to  avoid 
the  mad  evidence  Hebert  had  supplied.     When  he  sat  down, 
the  Defence   spoke  last  —  as  had    since  Rome  been    the 
custom  or  rather  the  obvious  justice  of  French  procedure; 
so  that  the  last  words  a  jury  may  hear  shall  be  words  for  the    i 
prisoner  at  the  bar  —  but  this  was  not  a  trial,  though  all    \ 
the  forms  of  trial  were  observed.     Chauveau-Lagarde  spoke     » 
first,  his  colleague  next.     When  they  had  ceased  they  were 
arrested  and  forbidden  to  leave  the  building,  lest   certain 
words  the  Queen  had  whispered  should  mean  some  com- 
munication with  the  invader. 

The  summing  up  (for  summing  up  was  still  permitted, 
and  it  would  be  a  century  of  Revolutionary  effort  before  the 
pressure  of  the  Bench  upon  the  Jury  should  be  gradually 
raised)  was  what  the  angers  of  that  night  expected  and 
received.  It  was  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  before  the 
four  questions  were  put  to  the  jury.  Four  questions  drawn 
indeed  from  the  Indictment  but  avoiding  its  least  proved 
or  least  provable  clauses.  Had  there  been  relations  between 
the  Executive  and  the  foreign  enemies  of  the  State,  and 
promises  of  aid  to  facilitate  the  advance  of  their  armies  ? 
If  so,  was  Marie  Antoinette  of  Austria  proved  to  have  been  \ 
privy  to  that  plan  ? 

The  Jury  left  the  hall.  A  murmur  of  tongues  loosened 
rose  all  around.  The  prisoner  was  led  out  beyond  the  doors 
of  the  chamber.  For  one  long  unexpected  hour  she  was  so 
detained  while  the  Jury  were  still  absent;  then  a  signal  was 
given  to  her  guards  and  they  led  her  in. 

The  cold  violence  of  formal  law  still  dominated  the 
lawyers.  Herman  put  forth  the  common  exhortation  of 


526  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

judges   against   applause  or  blame.     He  read   to  her  the 

Oct.  16, 1793.  conclusions  of  the  Jury :  they  were  affirm- 
in  Paris,  4  a.  m.  atjve  upon  every  pojnt  Qf  ^  f()ur  jje 

asked  her  with  that  same  cold  violence  of  formality, 
after  the  Public  Prosecutor  had  demanded  the  penalty 
of  death  set  down  for  such  actions  as  hers  in  the  new  Penal 
Code,  whether  she  had  anything  to  say  against  her  sen- 
tence. She  shook  her  head. 

She  was  at  the  end  of  human  things.  She  stood  and  saw 
the  Judges  upon  the  Bench  conferring  for  a  moment,  she 
stood  to  hear  her  sentence  read  to  her,  and  as  she  heard  it 
she  watched  them  in  their  strange  new  head-dress,  all 
plumes,  and  she  fingered  upon  the  rail  before  her  with  the 
gesture  ladies  learn  in  fingering  the  keys:  she  swept  her 
fingers  gently  as  though  over  the  keys  of  an  instrument,  and 
soon  the  reading  of  the  sentence  was  done  and  they  led  her 
away.  It  was  past  four  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

On  the  terrace  of  his  castle  in  Germany  that  night  George 
of  Hesse  saw  the  White  Lady  pass,  the  Ghost  without  a  face 
that  is  the  warning  of  the  Hapsburgs,  and  the  hair  of  his 
head  stood  up. 


The  long  dark  hours  of  the  morning  still  held  the  troops 
that  had  marched  over  from  the  left  to  the  right 

Oct.  Ib,  17oo. 

Before  Man-  of  the  French  position  before  Maubeuge.  The 
first  arrivals  had  some  moments  in  which  to  fall 
at  full  length  on  the  damp  earth  in  the  extremity  of  their 
fatigue,  but  all  the  while  the  later  contingents  came  marching 
in  until,  before  it  was  yet  day  but  when  already  the  farms 
about  knew  that  it  was  morning,  and  when  the  cocks  had 
begun  to  crow  in  the  steadings,  all  rose  and  stood  to  arms. 


;„,;      * 
»„<,  ,^f.  X-      \  *-&*          7 

*'  &'         ' 


ntfuftt  if ' /fa, 
)f 


cirn-jritr  e(    ff&t'  /an  ft  A      s  f       /  f.-',    *'*~-vll-,    >*///    >-> 

"'"  /«?<  £^™&9^2/C*  '•: ''«£«•:  *..  «,  J^ 

^^^^^^^^ 

S5fcS7^S4S 


/^'^^;;^^^c.^«^  <WJ^r/^!^  ^^'"v^ij&WHijf*  ''; 

SSsSSf^sS^ 


FIRST  PAGE  OF  MARIE  ANTOINETTE'S  LAST  LETTER 


WATTIGNIES  527 

The  mist  was  deepening  upon  them,  a  complete  silence 
interpenetrated  the  damp  veil  of  it,  nor  through  such  weather 
were  any  lights  perceptible  upon  the  heights  above  which 
marked  the  end  of  the  Austrian  line. 


The  Queen  went  down  the  stone  steps  of  the  passage: 
she  entered  regally  into  the  cell   made  ready. 

Ort    16    1793 

She  called  without  interval  for  pen  and  paper,    Jn  Paris',  a  little 


and  she  sat  down  to  write.  She  felt,  after  that 
transition  from  the  populous  court  to  the  silence 
of  these  walls,  an  energy  that  was  not  natural  and  that  could 
not  endure,  but  that  served  her  for  an  inspiration.  She 
had  tasted  but  a  bowl  of  soup  since  the  morning  —  nay, 
since  the  evening  before,  thirty  hours  —  soon  she  must 
fail.  Therefore  she  wrote  quickly  while  her  mood  was 
still  upon  her. 

She  sat  and  wrote  to  her  dead  husband's  sister  the  letter] 
which,  alone  of  all  her  acts,  lends  something  permanently 
noble  to  her  name.  It  is  a  run  of  words  exalted,  dignified, 
and  yet  tremendous,  nor  does  any  quality  about  that  four- 
fold sheet  of  writing,  yellow  with  years,  more  astound  the 
reader  than  the  quality  of  revelation:  for  here  something 
strong  and  level  in  her  soul,  something  hitherto  quite  undis- 
covered, the  deepest  part  of  all,  stands  and  shines.  The  sheet 
is  blurred  —  perhaps  with  tears  :  we  do  not  know  whether 
ever  it  was  signed  or  ended,  but  before  the  morning  came  she 
laid  herself  upon  her  bed  in  her  poor  black  dress,  her  head 
was  raised  somewhat  upon  her  right  hand,  and  so  lying  she 
began  very  bitterly  to  weep. 

The  priest  of  St.  Landry,  the  parish  church  of  the  prison, 
entered  to  minister  to  her:  she  spoke  just  such  few  words  to 


528  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

him  as  might  assure  her  that  he  had  sworn  the  civic  oath 
and  was  not  in  communion.  When  she  knew  this  she  would 
not  hear  him.  But  he  heard  her  murmuring  against  the 
bitter  cold,  and  bade  her  put  a  pillow  upon  her  feet.  She 
did  so  and  was  again  silent. 

The  hours  wore  on,  the  scent  of  newly  lighted  fires  came 
from  the  prison  yard  and  the  noise  of  men  awakening. 
The  drip  of  the  fussy  weather  sounded  less  in  the  increase  of 
movement,  and  on  the  pavement  of  the  quays  without  began 
the  tramp  of  marching  and  the  chink  of  arms;  from  further 
off  came  the  rumble  of  the  drums :  30,000  were  assembling 
to  line  her  Way.  The  two  candles  showed  paler  in  the 
wretched  room.  It  was  dawn. 


The  16th  of  October  broke  upon  the  Flemish  Hills:  the 

Oct.  16,  1793.  i  men  wno  bad  endured  that  night-march  along 
" 


Before    au-      ^  front  of  j-^  battle-field,  the  men  who  had 

beuge,  hali- 

past  six  in  the  received  them  among  the  positions  of  the  extreme 
right,  still  drooped  under  the  growing  light  and 
were  invigorated  by  no  sun.  The  mist  of  the  evening  and 
of  the  night  from  dripping  and  thin  had  grown  dense  and 
whitened  with  the  morning,  so  that  to  every  soldier  a  ne\v 
despair  and  a  new  bewilderment  were  added  from  the  very 
air,  and  the  blind  fog  seemed  to  make  yet  more  obscure 
the  obscure  designs  of  their  commanders.  The  day  of  their 
unnatural  vigil  had  dawned  and  yet  there  came  no  orders 
nor  any  stirring  of  men.  Before  them  slow  schistous  slopes 
went  upward  and  disappeared  into  the  impenetrable  weather 
which  hid  clogged  ploughland  and  drenched  brushwood  of 
the  rounded  hill;  hollow  lanes  led  up  through  such  a 
land  to  the  summit  of  the  little  rise  and  the  hamlet  of 


WATTIGNIES  529 

WATTIGNIES;    this  most  humble  and  least  of  villages  was 
waiting  its  turn  for  glory. 

The  downward  slope,  which  formed  the  eastern  end  of 
the  Austrian  line,  the  low  rounded  slope  whose  apex  was 
the  spire  of  the  village,  was  but  slightly  defended,  for  it 
was  but  the  extreme  end  of  a  position,  and  who  could 
imagine  then  —  or  who  noiv  —  that  march  through  the 
sleepless  night,  or  that  men  so  worn  should  yet  be  ready 
for  new  action  with  the  morning?  No  reinforcement, 
Coburg  knew,  could  come  from  behind  that  army:  and 
how  should  he  dream  that  Carnot  had  found  the  power  to 
feed  the  fortunes  of  the  French  from  their  own  vitals 
and  to  drag  these  shambling  7,000,  wrenched  from  west 
to  east  during  the  darkness:  or  how,  if  such  a  thing 
had  been  done,  could  any  man  believe  that,  such  a  torture 
suffered,  the  7,000  could  still  charge  ? 

Yet,  had  Coburg  known  the  desperate  attempt  he  would 
have  met  it,  he  would  have  covered  that  ultimate  flank  of 
his  long  ridge  and  reinforced  it  from  his  large  reserve.  But 
the  deep  mist  and  the  dead  silence  harshly  enforced  during 
the  night-march  had  hidden  all  the  game,  and  in  front  of 
Wattignies,  holding  that  round  of  sloping  fields  and  the  low- 
semicircular  end  of  the  ridge  before  the  village,  there  were 
but  3,000;  the  infantry  of  Klebek,  of  Hohenlohe,  and  of 
Stern;  for  their  cavalry  they  had  behind  them  and  along- 
side of  the  village  farms  a  few  dragoons;  certain  Croatian 
battalions  stood  in  a  second  line.  These,  in  that  morn- 
ing, expecting  nothing  but  perhaps  the  few  troops  as 
they  had  met  easily  the  day  before,  waited  under  the 
mist  in  formation  and  heard  no  sound.  The  morning 
broadened  ;  the  white  vapour  seemed  lighter  all 
around,  but  no  voices  could  be  heard,  nor  did  there 


530  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

come  up  through  its  curtain  any   rumble  of  limber  from 
the  roads  below. 


As  the  Queen  so  lay  disconsolate  and  weeping  bitterly, 
Oct.  is,  1793.  stretched  in  her  black  gown  upon  the  wretched 
seven'in  the"*  ^ed  an(*  supporting  her  head  upon  her  hand, 
moming.  there  came  in  the  humble  girl  who  had  served 
her  faithfully  and  who  was  now  almost  distraught  for  what 
was  to  come.  This  child  said: 

"You  have  not  eaten  all  these  hours.  .  .  .  What 
will  you  take  now  that  it  is  morning?" 

The  Queen  answered,  still  crying:  "My  child,  I  need 
nothing  more:  all  is  over  now."  But  the  girl  added: 
"Madam,  I  have  kept  warm  upon  the  hob  some  soup  and 
vermicelli.  Let  me  bring  it  you."  The  Queen,  weeping 
yet  more,  assented. 

She  sat  up  a  moment  (but  feebly  —  her  mortal  fatigue  had 
come  upon  her  —  her  loss  of  blood  increased  and  was  con- 
tinued) ,  she  took  one  spoonful  and  another ;  soon  she  laid  the 
nourishment  aside,  and  the  morning  drew  on  to  her  death. 

She  must  change  for  her  last  exit.  So  much  did  the  Revo- 
lution fear  to  be  cheated  of  its  defiance  to  the  Kings  that  the 
warders  had  orders  not  to  lose  sight  of  her  for  one  moment : 
but  she  would  change.  She  would  go  in  white  to  her  end. 

The  girl  who  had  served  her  screened  her  a  little,  and  in  the 
space  between  the  bed  and  the  wall  she  crouched  and  put  on 
fresh  linen,  and  in  place  of  her  faded  black  a  loose  white  mus- 
lin gown.  Her  widow's  head-dress  also,  in  which  she  had 
stood  proudly  before  her  Judges,  she  stripped  of  its  weeds, 
and  kept  her  hair  covered  by  no  more  than  the  linen  cap. 

The  Judges  came  in  and  read  to  her  her  sentence. 


AU  NOM  DE  LA  REPUBLIQUE. 

au  Commandant  -  gf- 
ntral  de  lajbrce  arrnte 
parisirnnt,  '  ^*^MMB^^"*^ 


J-j'ACCUSATEUR  PUBLIC,  pres  le  Tribunal  criminel- 
reVolutionnairc,  e"tabli  a  Paris  par  la  loi  du  10  mars  1793, 
du  jugeraent  du  Tribunal  </«•  C£j<rtvM//)+tp 
requiert  le  citoycn  commandant- 
de  la  force  arme*e  parisienne  ,  de  prcter  uiain- 
forte  et  mettre  sur  pied  la  force  publiquc  ,  necessaire  a 
1'ex^cution  dudit  jugement  rendu  contre 
/fMaKt'^.  atUncjt^  9*.*" '£•*.  c/jlH. 

condamne  a  la  peinc  de    ^f^LO  t^ laquellc 

/? 

execution  aura  lieu    CLuJFltsi*)  ^^/      **~ 


sur  la  ptace  publiquc  de  o/L. 

. — — - —  dc  cctte  villo.  Le  citoycn 

commandanl-gc'neral  cst  rcquis  dVnvoyer  ladile  force 
publiquc,  cour  du  Palais,  ledit  jour,  a  /Uu^  heures 
precises  du  4W°4+*. 

FAIT  a  Paris,  IcSf^"*""  **^-^ H*?- 

1'au  l**-*»3  dc  la  Rc'publiquc  f^anraise ,  uiu-  et  indi- 
visible, fntt^aii  'Wtt*c.<uDy  jtft'&Hj  A*e«^ — du^TTHs 

A  CCUS  ATE  UR     PUBLIC. 


FACSIMILE    OF  THE  DEATH  ^ARR'ANT  OF 
MARIE  ANTOINETTE 


WATTIGNIES  531 

The  executioner,  awkward  and  tall,  came  in.  He  must 
bind  her  hand.  "Why  must  you  bind  my  hands?  The 
King's  hands  were  not  bound."  Yet  were  her  hands  bound 
and  the  end  of  the  rope  left  loose  that  her  gaoler  might 
hold  it:  but  she,  perhaps,  herself,  before  they  bound  her, 
cut  off  the  poor  locks  of  her  hair. 

They  led  her  out  past  the  door  of  the  prison:  she  was 
"delivered"  and  signed  for;  on  the  steps  be- 

Oct.  16,  1793. 

fore  the  archway  she  went  up  into  the  cart,     in  Paris,  at 


hearing  the  crowd  howling  beyond  the  great 

iron    gates    of    the    Law  Courts,   and  seeing 

seated  beside  her  that  foresworn  priest  to  whom  she  would 

not  turn.      .     .     .      Nor  were  these  the  last  humiliations: 

but  I  will  not  write  them  here. 

Up  and  down  the  passages  of  the  prison  a  little  dog  whom 
she  had  cherished  in  her  loneliness  ran  whining  and 
disconsolate. 

The  cart  went  lumbering  on,  past  the  quay,  over 
the  bridge  under  the  murky  drizzle.  The  windows  beyond 
the  river  were  full  of  heads  and  faces  ;  the  edges  of  the  quays 
were  black  with  the  crowd.  The  river  Seine  ran  swollen 
with  the  rains;  its  tide  and  rolling  made  no  mark  upon 
the  drenched  water-walls  of  stone.  The  cart  went  lumber- 
ing on  over  the  rough  wet  paving  of  the  northern  bank. 
It  turned  into  the  Rue  St.  Honore,  where  the  narrow  depth 
was  full  of  noise.  The  long  line  of  troops  stood  erect 
and  close  upon  either  side.  The  dense  crowd  still  roared 
behind  them:  their  prey  sat  upon  the  plank,  diminished, 
as  erect  as  the  constraint  of  her  bonds  and  her  failing 
strength  would  allow.  Her  lips,  for  all  their  bent  of  agony, 
were  still  proud;  her  vesture  was  new:  her  delicate  high 
shoes  had  been  chosen  with  care  for  that  journey  --but 


532  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

her  face  might  have  satisfied  them  all.  The  painted  red 
upon  her  cheeks  was  dreadful  against  her  utter  paleness: 
from  beneath  the  linen  of  her  cap  a  few  whitened  wisps  of 
hair,  hung  dank  upon  her  hollowed  temples:  a  Victim. 
Her  eyes  were  sunken,  and  of  these  one  dully  watched 
her  foes,  one  had  lost  its  function  in  the  damp  half- 
darkness  of  the  cells:  it  turned  blank  and  blind  upon  the 
rabble  that  still  followed  the  walking  jolt  of  the  two  cart- 
horses and  the  broad  wheels.  At  the  head  of  those 
so  following,  an  actor-fellow  pranced  upon  a  horse, 
thrusting  at  her  by  way  of  index  a  sword,  and  shouting 
to  the  people  that  they  held  the  tigress  here,  the  Austrian. 
In  the  midst  of  those  so  following,  an  American,  eager  to 
see,  elbowed  his  way  and  would  not  lose  his  vantage.  From 
the  windows  of  the  narrow  gulf  the  continued  noise  of  won- 
der, of  jeers,  and  of  imprecations  reached  her.  She  still  sat 
motionless  and  without  speech  :  the  executioner  standing  be- 
hind her  holding  the  loose  end  of  the  cord,  the  forsworn  priest 
sitting  on  the  plank  beside  her  but  hearing  no  words  of  hers. 

It  is  said  that  as  the  tumbril  passed  certain  rnasts  whencer 
limp  tricoloured  pennants  hung  she  glanced  at  them  and  mur- 
mured a  word;  it  is  to  be  believed  that,  a  few  yards  further, 
at  the  turn  into  the  Rue  Royale,  she  gave  way  at  the  new  sight 
of  the  Machine  set  up  for  her  before  the  palace  gardens. 

This  is  known,  that  she  went  up  the  steps  of  the  scaffold 
at  liberty  and  stood  for  a  bare  moment  seen  by 

Oct.  16,  1793.  . 

in  Paris,  at        the    great    gathering    in   the    square,  a   figure 


agams  *  tne  trees  of  wnat  had  t>een  her  gardens  and 
the  place  where  her  child  had  played.     It   was 
but  a  moment,  she  was  bound  and  thrown  and  the  steel  fell, 


WATTIGNIES  533 

On  the  low  mud  and  slope  of  Wattignies  the  mist  began 
to  wreathe  and  thin  as  the  hours  approached 
high    noon.     Through  gaps   of  it  the  three 


Austrian  regiments  could  see  trees  now  and  about  eleyen  in 
then  in  the  mid-distance,  showing  huge,  and  . 
in  a  moment  covered  again  by  new  whorls  of  vapour.  But 
still  there  was  no  sound.  In  front  of  them  toward  Dimont, 
to  their  left  round  the  corner  of  the  slope  in  the  valley 
of  Glarges,  with  every  lift  of  vapour  the  landscape  became 
apparent,  when  suddenly,  as  the  mist  finally  lifted,  the  wide 
plain  showed  below  them  rolling  southwards,  a  vast  space 
of  wind  and  air,  and  at  the  same  moment  they  heard  first 
bugles,  then  the  shouts  of  command,  and  lastly  the  rising 
of  the  Marseillaise:  Gaul  was  upon  them. 

The  sleepless  men  had  been  launched  at  last,  the  hollow 
lanes  were  full  of  them  swarming  upward  :  the  fields  were 
ribbed  with  their  open  lines,  and  as  they  charged  they  sang. 

Immortal  song!  The  pen  has  no  power  over  colour  or 
over  music,  but  though  I  cannot  paint  their  lively  fury  or 
make  heard  their  notes  of  triumph  yet  I  have  heard  them 
singing:  I  have  seen  their  faces  as  they  cleared  the  last 
hedges  of  the  rise  and  struck  the  3,000  upon  every  side. 

These  stood,  wavered,  fell  back  to  re-form:  then  saw 
new  masses  of  the  Republicans,  roaring  up  from  Glarges 
behind  their  flank,  broke  and  were  scattered  by  the 
storm.  The  few  heavy  guns  of  the  Austrians  there  em- 
placed  were  trained  too  late  to  check  the  onrush.  The  little 
pieces  of  the  climbing  and  the  surging  men  were  dragged 
by  laniards,  unmasked  behind  gaps  in  the  hurrying  advance, 
crashed  grape  and  were  covered  again  for  a  moment  by 
the  living  cover  of  the  charge.  The  green  at  the  hill- 
top was  held,  the  poor  yards  and  byres  of  Wattignies 


534  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

were  scoured  and  thundered  through,  and  Carnot,  his  hat 
upon  his  sword,  and  Duquesnoy  his  face  half  blood,  and 
all  the  host  gloried  to  find  before  them  in  their  halting 
midday  sweat  when  the  great  thrust  was  over,  the  level 
fields  of  the  summit,  the  Austrian  line  turned,  and  an  open 
way  between  them  and  Maubeuge. 

Two  charges  disputed  their  certain  victory.  First  the 
Oct.  16, 1793.  Hungarian  cavalry  galloped  and  swerved  and 
betge!  Tit"  broke  against  the  dense  and  ever  denser  bodies 
past  noon.  thai  still  swarmed  up  three  ways  at  once  and 
converged  upon  the  crested  edge  of  the  upland  plain;  then 
the  Royal  Bourbon,  emigrants,  nobles,  swept  upon  the 
French,  heads  down,  ready  to  spend  themselves  largely  into 
death.  They  streamed  with  the  huge  white  flag  of  the  old 
Monarchy  above  them,  the  faint  silver  lilies  were  upon  it, 
and  from  either  rank  the  cries  that  were  shouted  in  defiance 
were  of  the  same  tongue  which  since  Christendom  began 
has  so  perpetually  been  heard  along  all  the  battle  fronts  of 
Christendom. 


These  also  failed:  a  symbol  im  name  a*nd  in  flag  and  in 
valour  of  that  great,  once  good,  and  very  ancient  thing 
which  God  now  disapproved. 

The  strong  line  of  Coburg  was  turned.  It  was  turned 
and  must  roll  back  upon  itself.  Its  strict  discipline  pre- 
served it,  as  did  the  loose  order  of  the  Republican  advance 
and  the  maddened  fatigue  of  the  young  men  who  had  just 
conquered:  for  these  could  work  a  miracle  but  not  yet 
achieve  a  plan.  The  enemy  fell  back  in  order,  sombre, 
massed  and  regular,  unharassed,  towards  the  Sambre. 
The  straggling  French  soldiery,  wondering  that  the  fighting 


WATTIGNIES  535 

had  ceased  (but  wisely  judged  incapable  of  pursuit),  pos- 
sessed the  main  road  unhindered;  and  that  evening  dra/.k 
with  their  comrades  in  Maubeuge. 

In  this  way  was  accomplished  what  a  principal  critic  of  i 
the  art  of  war1  has  called  "The  chief  feat  of  arms  of  the  | 
Republic." 

It  was  somewhat  past  noon. 


Upon  that  scaffold   before  the  gardens  which  had  been 
the  gardens  of  her  home  and  in  which  her  child 

°  Oct.  ID,  1793. 

had  played,  the  Executioner  showed  at  deliber-  in  Paris,  just 

ation  and  great  length,  this  way  and  that  on  pas 
every  side,  the  Queen's  head  to  the  people. 

1  Napoleon  Buonaparte. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  A 

THE   OPERATION  ON    LOUIS  THE   SIXTEENTH   OF   FRANCE 

THE  somewhat  lengthy  attempt  to  determine  the  exact 
date  which  changed  the  course  of  Louis  XVI.'s  life, 
to  which  I  have  been  compelled  in  the  text,  would 
have  been  unnecessary  had  the  document  which  proves  both 
the  operation  itself  and  the  moment  of  it  been  published. 

It  is  certain  that  Maria  Theresa  knew  in  the  last  year 
of  the  old  King's  reign  the  nature  of  the  trouble.1 

Louis  XVI.'s  hesitation  in  the  matter  endured  through 
the  month  immediately  succeeding  his  accession;  though 
in  the  December2  of  that  year  he  seems  to  have  come  very 
near  to  a  decision.  It  is  certain  that  the  Emperor  was  to 
act  with  authority  in  the  matter;  and  it  is  probable  that 
Louis  XVI's  long  and  disastrous  hesitation  was  in  part 
occasioned  by  his  brother-in-law's  delay  and  postpone- 
ment of  his  voyage  to  Versailles. 

Mercy  was  informed  thoroughly  of  the  main  object  of  the 
Emperor's  visit  just  before  it  took  place,'  and  Maria  Theresa 
at  the  same  time  specially  emphasised  to  her  Ambassador 
this  capital  business  which  her  son  had  undertaken.4 

1  MARIA  THERESA  to  MERCY,  yd  January,  1774.  —  "  Je  ne  compte  presque  plus  que  sur  1'entremise  de 
empereur,  qui  a  son  arrivee  a  Versailles,  trouvera  peut-etre  le  moyen." 

3  MARIE  ANTOINETTE  to  MARIA  THERESA,  ijth  December,  1774.  —  "  Le  roi  a  eu  il  y  a  huit  jours  une  grande 
conversation  avec  mon  m61ecin;  je  suis  fort  contente  de  ses  dispositions  et  j'ai  bonne  espeVance  de  suivre  bien- 
tdt  1'example  de  ma  soeur." 

•MERCY  to  MARIA  THERESA,  iSth  March,  1777.  —  " Relativement  au  se"jour  que  fera  ici  S.  M.  1'emper- 
eur,  et  a  toutes  les  circonstances  qui  pourront  en  resulter,  il  ne  me  reste  pas  la  moindre  incertitude  sur  les 
hautes  intentions  de  V.  M.,  et  ses  ordres  seront  remplis  avec  tout  le  scrupule  et  le  soin  qu'exige  1'impor- 
tance  d'une  pareille  conjuncture  dont  il  peut  resulter  tant  de  differents  effets." 

4  MARIA  THERESA  to  MERCY,  3ist  March,  1777.  —  "  Vous  pouvez  bien  croire  que  ce  point  est  un  des  plus 
importants  a  eclaircir,  s'il  y  a  esperer  de  la  succession  ou  point,  et  vous  tacherez  de  mettre  au  clair  cela  avec 
1'empereur." 

539 


540  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

We  know  that  the  operation  was  performed  by  the 
King's  surgeon,  Lassone,  and  the  point  is  to  determine, 
in  the  absence  of  direct  evidence,  the  date  upon  which 
Lassone  operated. 

I  say  "in  the  absence  of  direct  evidence,"  for,  though 
that  evidence  exists,  it  is  not  available.  All  papers  left 
by  Lassone,  including  the  proces  verbal  of  the  operation 
on  the  King,  were  ultimately  brought  into  the  collection 
of  Feuillet  de  Conches.  This  collector  has  been  dead 
twenty  years,  and  Dr.  Des,  among  others,  asked,  just 
after  his  death,  for  the  production  of  this  all-important 
document;  but  it  was  refused,  and  I  believe  it  is  still  refused. 

It  is  a  great  loss  to  history.  Moreover,  one  does  not  see 
what  purpose  can  be  served  by  such  reticence,  if,  as  I  believe, 
it  is  still  maintained. 

As  it  is,  we  must  depend  upon  a  few  veiled  and  discreet 
allusions  in  the  contemporary  correspondence  of  Mercy, 
the  Queen,  and  the  Empress.  The  principal  of  these  con- 
sist in  nine  passages,  the  first  of  which  is  as  follows:  - 

"  Le  27  je  me  rendis  de  grand  matin  a  Versailles,  ou,  apres  avoir  parle 
d'affaires  avec  le  comt  de  Vergennes,  j'allai  a  Photel  garni  qu'occupait  1'em- 
pereur.  Le  premier  medecin  Lassone  avail  etc  pendant  une  heure  chez  S. 
M.,  et  elle  etait  alors  dans  son  cabinet  avec  1'abbe  de  Vermond." 

This  letter  was  written  on  15th  June,  1777.  Mercy, 
who  had  been  in  very  bad  health,  sends  to  Maria  Theresa 
his  account  of  the  Emperor's  visit.  In  this  letter  he  men- 
tions, under  the  date  Tuesday,  27th  May,  a  long  interview 
which  the  Emperor  had  with  Lassone,  he  himself,  Mercy, 
being  present,  and  also  Vermond,  the  Queen's  former 
tutor.  Later  in  the  day  the  Emperor  spent  two  hours  alone 
with  his  brother-in-law,  discussing,  in  Mercy's  phrase,  "con- 
fidential details."  It  was  at  this  momennt,  presumably,  that 


APPENDICES  541 


the  Emperor  persuaded  the  King.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore, 
that  he  put  off  mention  of  the  matter  until  late  in  his  visit, 
at  the  end  of  the  month  of  May.  Maria  Theresa,  having 
by  that  time  had  opportunity  of  hearing  by  word  of  mouth 
things  that  could  hardly  be  written,  writes  that  she  is  con- 
tent so  far  as  things  have  gone,  but  is  waiting  to  hear  about 
everything  from  her  son  on  his  return. 

She  also  writes  to  Marie  Antoinette  on  the  29th  June, 
1777,  as  follows:  — 

"  J'en  attends  les  plus  heureuses  suites,  et  meme  pour  votre  etat  de  manage, 
sur  lequel  on  me  laisse  esperance:  mais  on  remet  le  tout  au  retour,1  ou  on 
pourra  me  parler." 

It  is  evident  that  nothing  was  done  during  the  Emper- 
or's actual  stay,  or  in  his  presence.  On  the  29th  of  August, 
Maria  Theresa,  having  seen  her  son,  is  still  by  no  means 
certain.1  One  must  allow  a  fortnight  (more  or  less)  for  news 
to  reach  her  from  Versailles.  We  may  be  confident,  there- 
fore, that  whatever  was  written  to  about  her  the  middle  of 
the  month  of  August  was  not  yet  wholly  reassuring,  though 
lk:s  may  not  prove  that  no  operation  had  taken  place;  it 
may  only  go  to  show  that  success  was  not  yet  certain. 

It  is  on  the  10th  of  September,  in  a  letter  from  Marie 
Antoinette  to  Maria  Theresa  that  the  first  note  of  confidence 
on  the  part  of  the  Queen  appears.  It  was  premature,  but 
matters  were  now  certain.1 

We  may,  therefore,  take  it  for  certain  that  things  were 
settled  not  earlier  than  the  middle  of  August,  nor  later  than 
the  end  of  the  first  week  of  September;  and  it  may  be  pre- 
dicted that  when  Lassone's  paper  sees  the  light  it  will  bear 
a  date  within  those  three  weeks. 

i "  The  return,"  of  the  Emperor,  that  is. 

*MAHIA  THERESA  to  MERCY,  2gth  August,  1777.  —  "Je  le  souhaite  k  1'egard  du  roi,  mais  je  n'en  suis 
pas  rassuree." 

|UCe  nouveau-ne""  —  she  writes  of  her  sister-in-law's  child  —  "me  fait  encore  plus  de  plaisir  par  1'esper- 
ance  que  j'ai  d'avoir  bientdt  le  mgmc  bonheur." 


542  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Mercy  sees  by  January4  that  everything  is  long  settled. 
The  Queen  knew  herself  to  be  with  child  in  the  first  week 
in  April,  and  news  was  sent  to  her  mother  on  the  date 
which  I  have  given  in  the  text. 

4  "  Je  dois  aussi  ajouter  la  remarque  trfcs  essentielle  que  la  reine  continue  a  se  conduire  tres-bien  avcc  le 
roi,  qui  de  son  c6t6  persiste  a  vivre  maritalement  dans  le  sens  le  plus  exact  et  le  plus  reel." 


APPENDIX  B 

ON  THE  EXACT   TIME  AND   PLACE    OF    DROUET's  RIDE 

A  •  AHE  reader  or  student  acquainted  with  various 
records  of  the  French  Revolution  may  be  tempted 
to  regard  the  account  of  Drouet's  Ride  in  my  text 
as  containing  too  much  detail  for  accurate  history;  espec- 
ially as  no  historian  has  hitherto  done  more  than  vaguely  al- 
lude to  it.  I  will  therefore  in  this  Appendix  show  the  way  in 
which  I  found  it  possible  to  reproduce  every  circumstance 
of  Drouet's  movements  from  the  time  when  he  left  Ste. 
Menehould  until  the  time  of  his  arrival  at  Varennes. 

The  berline  left  Ste.  Menehould  shortly  after  eight.  It 
had  to  climb  to  Germeries  Wood1  on  the  crest  of  the  forest, 
four  hundred  feet  in  four  miles.  It  could  not  possibly,  there- 
fore, have  reached  the  summit  till  after  nine,  and  however 
fast  was  the  run  down  on  to  Islettes  (just  over  five  miles 
from  Ste.  Menehould)  that  village  cannot  have  been 
reached  before  9.15.  From  Islettes  to  Clermont  is  just  four 
miles,  and  mostly  slightly  rising.  The  best  going  could  not 
cover  the  distance  in  twenty  minutes,  which  puts  the  earliest 
possible  entry  into  Clermont  at  twenty-five  or  twenty  to  ten. 
The  change  of  horses  took  from  ten  minutes  to  a  quarter  of 
an  hour.  Put  it  at  the  lowest,  and  one  has  for  the  earliest 
possible  time  the  berline  can  have  left  Clermont  that  it 
must  have  been  within  ten  minutes  of  ten  o'clock. 

From  Clermont  to  Varennes  is  nine  miles:  a  straight 
road,  descending  slightly  on  the  whole,  but  not  quite  flat. 

»The  summit  is  860  feet  above  the  sea;  the  town  about  460  feet. 

543 


544  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Under  the  best  conditions  that  day  the  berline  had  not 
covered  ten  miles  in  the  hour;  let  it  gallop  at  twelve  (a  pace 
it  was  quite  incapable  of,  save  in  short  spells)  and  Varennes 
would  still  be  three-quarters  of  an  hour  off. 

Now  Varennes  was  entered  just  on  a  quarter  to  eleven. 
The  berline  cannot,  therefore,  have  left  Clermont  later  than 
ten;  and  cannot  harve  arrived  earlier  than  ten  minutes  to  ten; 
so  this  departure  of  the  Royal  Family  from  Clermont  for 
Varennes,  of  Drouet's  postilions  back  from  Clermont  for  Ste. 
Menehould,  took  place  sometime  in  those  ten  minutes. 

Now  Drouet  reached  Varennes  before  eleven.  He 
reached  it  round  about  by  the  forest  —  not  by  the  main 
road  —  and  he  reached  it  by  a  gallop  through  a  pitch- 
dark  night  in  dense  wood  without  a  moon.1  The  shortest 
line  as  the  crow  flies  from  the  last  bend  of  the  road  before 
Clermont  to  Varennes  Bridge  is  ten  miles;  any  deviation 
through  the  wood,  even  in  a  straight  line,  would  make  it 
nearly  twelve.  It  is  very  difficult  to  cover  twelve  miles 
in  an  hour  under  such  conditions,  but  even  if  you  allow 
Drouet  that  pace  he  must  leave  the  high  roadabout  ten. 

All  this  synchronises  to  within  a  very  few  minutes.  The 
postilions  leave  Clermont  to  turn  back  home  in  the  ten 
minutes  before  ten;  they  go  fast,  for  they  are  riding  light; 
a  mile  or  so  up  the  road  they  meet  their  master.  It  is  just 
here  that  the  forest  on  the  northern  side  of  the  ravine 
touches  the  modern  railway  and  comes  nearest  to  the  road. 
Drouet  takes  to  the  forest  certainly  not  before  ten  and 
equally  certainly  not  ten  minutes  after. 

So  much  for  the  hour  at  which  he  took  to  the  wood. 

Now  what  road  did  he  pursue  in  the  forest?  Only  one 
is  possible.  The  forest  here  covers  a  high  ridge,  some 

!The  sky  was  overcast. 


APPENDICES  545 

three  hundred  feet  above  the  open  plain.  Down  in  the 
plain,  parallel  to  this  ridge  and  at  its  base,  runs  the  high 
road  from  Clermont  to  Varennes,  with  a  row  of  farms 
and  wide  fields  between  it  and  the  edge  of  the  wood.  Had 
Drouet  gone  anywhere  but  along  the  ridge  he  would  have 
had  to  cross  some  twenty  streams,  to  climb  and  fall  over 
as  many  ravines  (all  of  clay),  to  flank  a  dozen  clay  ponds 
and  marshes,  and  with  all  this  there  was  no  continuous 
path.  He  could  not  have  done  it  in  two  hours,  let  alone 
one.  He  was  compelled  to  follow  the  ridge.  It  so  hap- 
pens that  there  runs  all  along  the  ridge  a  green  ride  called 
"the  High  Ride."  It  is  a  Gaulish  track  of  great  antiquity, 
known  to  the  peasantry  as  "the  Roman  Way."  It  does 
not  come  down  as  far  as  Clermont,  it  leaves  the  forest  at  the 
farm  and  huts  of  Locheres.  To  this  farm  Drouet  must 
have  made  his  way  by  the  lanes  and  gates  of  Jacques  and 
Haute  Prise  —  once  at  Locheres,  a  hard  gallop  along  the 
High  Ride  brought  him  in  six  or  seven  miles  to  the  Crossed 
Stone  (called  also  the  Dead  Girl);  here  another  green  ride 
crosses  the  main  ride  of  the  ridge.  He  took  this  cross  ride  to 
the  right  hand :  it  leads  down  and  out  of  the  forest;  one  comes 
out  of  the  wood  a  mile  or  so  from  Varennes  with  the  town 
right  below  one  and  what  was  then  a  lane  (now  it  is  a  county 
road)  through  the  open  valley  fields.  Just  before  entering 
the  town  a  detour  (by  where  the  tile-works  are  now)  would  get 
him  into  the  Rue  de  Mont  Blainville,  and  so  to  the  Bridge:  a 
detour  serving  the  double  purpose  of  avoiding  possible  troops 
at  the  entry  to  the  town  and  of  getting  ahead  of  any  carriage 
coming  in  from  Clermont.  He  cannot  but  have  taken  this 
detour,  have  noted  the  waggon  by  the  bridge  as  he  passed 
it  (he  later  used  it  to  block  the  bridge)  and  then  have  come 
up  the  main  street  from  the  river. 


APPENDIX  C 

THE   ORDER   TO   CEASE   FIRE 

THE  order  to  cease  fire,   which  forms  the  frontis- 
piece of  this  book,  and  which  is  the  last  executive 
document    of    the    French    monarchy,    has    been 
misunderstood  by  not  a  few  critics,  and  its  value  thereby 
lessened. 

It  is,  as  I  shall  presently  show,  authentic,  and  therefore 
of  the  highest  possible  interest  to  every  student  of  history. 
The  traveller  will  find  it  to-day  in  the  central  glass  case 
of  the  square  Revolutionary  Room  in  the  Carnavalet 
Museum.  The  body  of  the  writing  is  not  in  the  hand  of 
Louis  himself,  but  the  signature  is  undoubtedly  his.  The 
lines  were  scribbled  in  haste  by  some  one  attendant  upon 
the  King,  signed  by  him,  and  sent  to  the  palace. 

Now  no  event  of  such  importance  and  so  recent  has 
been  more  variously  described  by  eye-witnesses  than  the 
fall  of  the  palace  in  1792;  and  the  particular  incident  of 
the  order  to  cease  fire  suffers,  like  every  other  detail  of 
those  famous  hours,  from  a  plethora,  and  therefore  a  con- 
flict, of  evidence. 

It  may  be  remarked  in  passing,  and  by  way  of  digression, 
that  such  difficulty  cannot  but  attach  to  any  episode  of 
hard  fighting,  on  account  of  the  mental  condition  which 
that  exercise  produces.  There  is  exactly  the  same  trouble, 
for  instance,  in  determining  with  exactitude  the  all-impor- 
tant moment  of  the  evening  in  which  the  Guard  failed  at 
Waterloo. 

546 


APPENDICES  547 

We  may  confidently  say,  however,  that  two  separate  mes- 
sages were  sent  to  the  palace.  The  first  was  a  verbal 
message  to  cease  fire,  which  reached  Herville,  who  was 
directing  the  whole  operation.  Herville,  as  we  know, 
refused  to  obey,  having  the  action  well  in  hand,  and  being 
yet  confident  of  success.  Either  after  the  southern  end  of 
the  Tuileries  had  been  forced  by  the  populace  (who,  as 
we  know  now,  turned  the  flank  of  the  defence  by  fighting 
their  way  through  from  the  Long  Gallery),  or  while  that 
capital  incident  was  in  progress,  Durler,  a  captain  of  the 
Swiss  Guards,  commanding  no  more  than  a  company, 
but  probably  the  company  which  had  the  best  chance  of 
retreating,  asked  for  orders.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
he  would  have  done  so  unless  the  position  was  already 
desperate.  The  order  which  reached  him  was  a  repetition 
of  the  former  one,  but  it  was  written,  not  verbal,  and  it  is 
this  second  written  order  the  facsimile  of  which  forms  the 
frontispiece  to  this  volume.  Durler  did  not  see  it 
written.  He  had  gone  in  person  to  learn  what  he  should 
do,  but  he  was  back  again  with  his  men  before  the 
note  was  handed  to  him.  He  was  a  perfectly  honest  and 
trustworthy  man  and  his  testimony  remains.  It  is 
evident  from  this  testimony  that,  by  the  time  the  note 
came,  all  was  over. 

As  to  the  pedigree  of  the  document:  — 

Durler  rose  to  the  rank  of  general  before  his  death.  He 
naturally  regarded  this  piece  of  historic  writing  as  among 
the  most  precious  of  his  possessions,  and  left  it  to  his  family 
who  were  resident  in  Lucerne.  Chateaubriand,  visiting 
Lucerne  on  the  15th  of  May,  1832,  saw  it  in  that  town. 
From  General  Durler's  daughter  and  heiress  it  descended 
to  his  grandchildren,  Schimacher  by  name,  and  was  in  the 


548  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

early  eighties  the  property  of  M.  Felix  Schimacher  of 
Lucerne,  whose  agent  in  Paris  was  a  banker,  Mr.  de  Trooz. 
M.  Cousin,  the  curator  of  the  Municipal  Museum  of 
Paris  (the  Carnavalet),  hearing  of  it,  approached  Mr. 
de  Trooz,  and  offered  a  large  sum  on  behalf  of  the  city. 
The  offer  was  accepted.  The  pedigree  of  the  document 
was  drawn  up  by  M.  Dagobert  Schimacher,  lawyer  in 
Lucerne,  and  the  whole  despatched  to  Paris,  where  the 
purchase  was  completed  on  the  27th  of  July,  1886,  and 
the  document  deposited  in  the  Museum,  where  it  now  lies. 


APPENDIX  D 

ON    THE   LOGE   OF  THE   "  LOGOTACHYGRAPHE " 

THE  Manege  was  pulled  down  after  the  consular 
decree  of  year  XI.,  which  originated  the  Rue  de 
Rivoli;  the  historical  reconstruction  of  its  arrange- 
ments on  the  10th  of  August,  1792,  is  the  more  difficult 
from  the  fact  that  the  only  accurate  plan  of  it  which  has 
come  down  to  us1  dates  from  a  period  earlier  than  Decem- 
ber, 1791,  in  which  month  (on  the  27th)  the  order  was 
given  to  change  nearly  the  whole  of  its  dispositions.  The 
box  of  the  Logographe  can  be  fixed  in  this  plan  (though 
not  in  the  new  place  it  occupied  after  the  5th  of  Janu- 
ary, 1792). • 

We  know1  that  it  was  near  the  President's  Chair,  and 
this  was  on  the  south  side  of  the  Manege,  in  the  middle. 
It  was  in  this  box  that  the  Queen  had  appeared  when  her 
husband  had  accepted  the  Constitution  on  the  return  from 
Varennes;  and  it  was  in  this  box  that  the  Royal  Family  were 
supposed,  until  lately,  to  have  stayed  in  the  three  days 
after  the  fall  of  the  palace. 

There  were  many  such  grated  boxes  for  reporters  up 
and  down  the  Hall:  the  proximity  of  the  Logographes  to 
the  Chair  being  due  to  the  desire  for  accurate  verbatim 
reports  to  be  recorded  from  the  best  acoustic  position  of 
the  Hall. 

But  our  establishment  of  the  Logographe's  box  is  of 

1  In  the  Histoire  des  Edifices,  &c.,  by  Paris. 

"The  work  was  finished  by  the  26th  of  January,  1792. 

•  By  the  7th  clause  of  the  order  cited. 

549 


550  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

little  value  to  the  history  of  the  10th  of  August,  because, 
though  a  confusion  was  till  recently  made  between  the  two, 
the  box  in  which  the  Royal  Family  were  put  was  that  of 
the  Logotachygraphe,  a  journal  not  yet  published,  but 
in  preparation,  and  one  which  had  already  obtained  leave 
to  have  its  reporting  place  in  the  Hall.  Its  exact  situation 
we  cannot  determine,  but  it  was  certainly  not  far  from  the 
Chair  on  the  south  wall,  and  presumably  in  the  eastern 
half  of  it. 


APPENDIX  E 

UPON  THE  "LAST  PORTRAIT  OP  THE  QUEEN"  BY  KUCHARSKI 

THREE  "last"  portraits  of   Marie  Antoinette,  each 
very  similar  to  the  two  others,  though  not  replicas, 
are  known  to  exist :  each  is  ascribed  to  the  painter 
Kucharski,   who  appears  for  a  moment  at  the  Queen's 
trial,  and  who  is  known  to  have  painted  her  at  Court. 

These  portraits  are,  one  in  Arenberg  Gallery  at  Brussels, 
another  in  the  Carnavalet,  and  the  third  in  the  new  Revo- 
lutionary Room  on  the  third  floor  at  Versailles.  This  last 
is  the  one  which  is  reproduced  here,  because  M.  de  Nolhac, 
by  far  the  best  authority,  has  assured  me  of  its  authenticity. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  mentioned  that  the  Belgian 
one  was  vouched  for  by  Auguste  d' Arenberg1  who  bought 
it  in  1805,  and  who  quotes  the  testimony  of  the  painter2 
himself,  who  was  then  alive. 

1  See  "  Notes  sur  quelques  Portraits  de  la  Galerie  d' Arenberg,"  in  the  Annales  de  I' Academic  Royale  d'Arch- 
eologie  de  Belgique,  4th  series,  vol.  x.,  1897. 

2On  this  painter  there  exists  a  monograph  by  Mycielski  (Paris,  1894),  and  an  article  published  in  the  Decem- 
ber number,  1905,  of  the  Revue  d'Art,  Ancien  et  Moderne. 

He  appears  to  have  affirmed  that  he  saw  the  Queen  in  the  Temple  when  he  was  on  guard,  took  the  sketch, 
noting  the  details  of  dress,  &c.,  and  completing  the  work  at  home. 


APPENDIX  P 

ON   THE   AUTHENTICITY   OF  THE    QUEEN'S   LAST   LETTER 

THE  few  doubts  that  some  have  put  forward  against 
the  authenticity  of  this  famous  document  will 
unless  history  abandons  its  modern  vices,  increase 
with  time,  for  it  is  a  document  exactly  suited  to  the  type 
of  minute,  internal,  literal,  and  documentary  criticism 
by  which  tradition  is,  to-day,  commonly  assailed.  It  will 
be  pointed  out  that  the  psychology  of  this  letter  differs 
altogether  from  that  of  the  mass  of  Marie  Antoinette's  little 
scribbled  notes,  and  equally  from  her  serious  political  drafts 
and  despatches.  Critics  will  very  probably  be  found  to 
dispute  the  possibility  of  such  a  woman  at  such  a  time 
producing  such  a  document.  The  style  fits  ill  with  what 
she  was  in  Court  just  before  it  purports  to  have  been  written, 
and  also  with  what  she  was  on  her  way  to  the  scaffold  just 
after.  Most  important  of  all,  perhaps,  the  sentences  are 
composed  in  a  manner  quite  different  from  that  of  any 
other  letter  of  hers  we  possess;  they  have  a  rhythm  and  a 
composition  in  them:  the  very  opening  words  are  in  a 
manner  wholly  more  exalted  and  more  rhetorical  than  ever 
was  her  own. 

It  will  be  further  and  especially  pointed  out  that  the 
moment  when  it  was  discovered  was  the  very  moment 
for  forgery,  and  this  point  is  of  such  importance  to  the  dis- 
cussion that  I  must  elaborate  it. 

By  nightfall  of  June  18th,  1815,  the  experiment  of  found- 
ing democracy  in  Europe  was  imagined  to  be  at  an  end: 

Hi 


APPENDICES  553 

Napoleon  was  definitely  defeated.  On  the  7th  of  July  the 
first  forces  of  the  Allies  entered  Paris,  and  on  the  20th  of 
November  was  signed  the  second  Treaty  of  Paris,  whereby 
the  reinstatement  of  the  old  regime  in  France  was  accom- 
plished at  a  price  to  the  nation  of  700,000,000  francs  and 
all  of  its  conquests.  All  the  power  of  a  highly  centralised 
Government  was  now  in  the  hands  of  Louis  XVIII.,  and  it 
was  in  the  highest  degree  profitable  to  prove  oneself  a  friend 
to  what  had  but  a  few  months  before  seemed  a  lost  cause. 
Document  after  document  appeared  professing  a  special 
knowledge  of  the  woes  of  the  Royal  Family,  petition  after  pe- 
tition was  presented  in  which  the  petitioners  (nearly  always  in 
the  same  conventional  and  hagiographical  style)  spoke  of  the 
Royal  "martyrs"  in  the  Temple  and  in  the  Conciergerie. 

In  the  light  of  such  a  character  attaching  to  this  particular 
moment,  note  the  following  sequence  of  dates  in  connec- 
tion with  the  production  of  the  document  we  are  discussing. 

Not  two  months  after  the  signing  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris 
the  French  Chamber  voted  the  Law  of  Amnesty.  The 
seventh  clause  of  this  Act  banished  the  regicides  who  had 
sat  in  the  Convention.  Among  these  was  a  certain  Courtois, 
a  man  now  over  seventy  years  of  age,  who  had  bought  a  large 
country  house  and  estate  near  the  frontier.  Note,  further, 
that  Courtois  had  started  as  a  small  bootmaker  and  was  one 
of  the  very  few  politicians  of  the  Revolution  who  had  fol- 
lowed our  modern  practice  of  making  money  out  of  politics. 
His  honesty,  therefore,  was  doubtful:  a  thing  which  we 
cannot  say  of  the  enthusiasts  of  the  time.  Of  those  we 
can  say  that  their  imaginations  or  their  passions  may  warp 
their  evidence,  but  in  the  case  of  Courtois  we  know  that  he 
was  a  professional  politician  of  the  modern  type,  and  would 
do  a  dishonest  thing  for  money. 


554  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

Now  this  Courtois  had  been  one  of  a  Commission  named 
by  the  Convention  to  examine  Robespierre's  papers  after  the 
fall  of  Robespierre  on  the  28th  of  July,  1794.  He  was  what 
the  French  call  the  Reporter  of  the  Commission  —  that 
is,  the  director  of  it  —  and  it  was  called  the  "Courtois 
Commission."  The  Commission  published  their  report 
of  what  they  had  found  in  Robespierre's  house.  It  was  a 
report  two  volumes  in  length  for  which  Courtois  was 
responsible,  and  of  which  he  was  practically  the  author. 

This  minute  and  voluminous  report  made  no  mention  of 
the  Queen's  letter.  Not  a  word  is  heard  of  it  during  all 
those  twenty-two  years  until  the  aforesaid  Bill  of  Amnesty 
is  before  the  French  Parliament  of  the  Restoration  and 
the  regicides,  including  old  Courtois,  passing  his  last  days 
on  his  comfortable  estate,  are  to  suffer  exile.  Then  for 
the  first  time  the  Queen's  letter  appears.  On  the  25th 
of  January,  1816,  Courtois  writes  to  a  prominent  lawyer, 
an  acquaintance  of  his  wife's,  a  Royalist,  and  in  touch 
with  the  Court,  telling  him  that  he  had  kept  back  ten  pieces 
among  the  mass  of  things  found  in  Robespierre's  house, 
three  of  them  trinkets,  a  lock  of  hair,  etc.,  one  or  two 
letters  of  no  importance  —  and  the  capital  point  of  all, 
this  letter  of  Marie  Antoinette's  to  her  sister-in-law.  He 
offers  to  exchange  these  against  a  special  amnesty  to  him- 
self, or  at  least  of  a  year's  delay  before  he  is  exiled,  in 
order,  presumably,  to  allow  him  to  realise  his  fortune. 

This  is  not  all :  the  letter  was  not  written  until  Courtois' 
wife  was  dead;  and  it  was  written  on  the  very  day  of  her 
death  and  the  moment  after  it  —  the  moment,  that  is,  after 
the  death  of  the  only  person  who  would  presumably  know  — 
if  he  allowed  anyone  to  know  —  whether  he  had  or  had  not 
carefully  concealed  these  documents  for  so  many  years. 


APPENDICES  555 

The  Government  of  Louis  XVIII.  offered  money  for  the 
letter,  and,  having  so  lulled  the  suspicions  of  Courtois,  sent 
one  of  its  officials  without  warning  into  his  house  and 
seized  his  effects.  Some  days  afterwards  the  letter  (which 
no  one  had  yet  seen  or  heard  of)  is  produced  by  Royal  order 
and  shown  to  Madame  d'Angouleme  (who  is  said  to  have 
fainted  when  she  saw  it),  and  ordered  to  be  read  from 
every  pulpit  during  Mass  on  the  16th  of  October  of  every 
year;  a  vast  edition  of  it  is  brought  out  in  facsimile  and 
distributed  broadcast,  and  the  letter  itself  is  enshrined 
among  the  public  exhibits  at  the  Archives. 

A  lengthy  analysis  of  the  sort  just  concluded  is  neces- 
sary to  make  the  reader  understand  how  and  why  a  strong 
attack  upon  the  authenticity  of  the  letter  will  sooner  or 
later  certainly  be  made.  I  owe  it  to  my  readers  to  say 
why  the  apparently  strong  presumption  against  this  letter 
does  not  in  my  opinion  hold. 

First  let  me  recapitulate  what  is  to  be  said  against  it: 

(1)  There  is  no  contemporary  trace  of  it.1 

(2)  It  appears  at  a  moment  when  forged  documents  of 
that  sort  were  of  the  highest  value  both  to  a  despotic  Gov- 
ernment and  to  the  vendors  or  producers  of  them. 

(3)  That  moment  is  no  less  than  twenty-two  years  pos- 
terior to  the  supposed  writing  of  the  letter,  and,  during  all 
those   twenty-two   years,    of   the   many   who   should   have 
seen  it,  of  the  three  public  men  (all  enemies)  through  whose 
hands  it  must  have  passed,  no  one  has  heard  of  its  exist- 
ence nor  mentioned  it  in  a  private    correspondence,  nor 

1  The  woman  Bault,  who  was  wardress  of  the  Conciergerie,  says  that  her  husband  told  her  of  such  a 
letter,  but  her  evidence  is  given  after  Louis  XVIII.  had  published  it,  and  for  all  those  twenty-two  years 
she  had  said  nothing  about  it.  Moreover  she  talked  of  its  discovery  with  the  usual  clap-trap  phrases  of  "  The 
Omnipotence  of  Heaven  showing  its  ineffable  goodness  by  restoring  us  this  monument  in  its  most  admir- 
able way,  &c."  And  the  only  contemporary  account,  while  it  does  mention  the  lock  of  hair  which  the  Queen 
desired  given  to  a  friend,  says  nothing  of  the  letter. 


556  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

apparently  so  much  as  spoken  of  it  in  a  conversation  to  a 
friend. 

(4)  It  is  heard  of  from  a  man  who  would  have  every 
interest  in  forging  it  and  who  is  known  to  have  been  very 
unscrupulous  in  political  dealings  for  money. 

(5)  He  makes  his  offer  on  the  very  day  when  the  last 
witness  there  could  be  against  him  dies. 

(6)  The  document,  when  it  does  appear,  appears  with- 
out any  pedigree,  or  chain  of  witnesses  to  vouch  for  it,  nor 
even  any  tradition.     It  is  vouched  for  only  by  the  people 
who  had  most  interest  in  creating  such  a  relic  and  is  forced 
upon  the  public  with  every  apparatus  at  the  command  of 
a  despotic  Government. 

(7)  Most  important  of  all,  the  letter  is  written  in  a  high 
and  affecting  style  wholly  different  from  all  that  we  know 
of  Marie  Antoinette's  writing,  and  quite  inconsistent  with 
her  demeanour  at  the  moment,  consonant  only  with  the 
sanctity  which  it  was  at  that  moment  desired  to  give  to  the 
Royal  Family. 

Nevertheless  I  believe  the  document  to  be  without  the 
slightest  doubt  authentic,  and  I  will  give  my  reasons  for 
this  certitude :  — 

(1)  To  forge  a  letter  of  Marie  Antoinette's  is  peculiarly 
difficult.  There  have  been  many  such  attempts.  They 
have  been  discovered  with  an  ease  familiar  to  all  students 
of  her  life. 

This  difficulty  lies  in  the  great  irregularity  of  her  method 
of  writing,  coupled  with  the  exact  persistence  of  certain 
types  of  letter.  She  never  in  her  life  could  write  a  line 
straight  across  a  page.  She  never  made  two  "d's"  exactly 
the  same,  and  yet  you  never  can  mistake  one  of  her  "d's." 
She  never  crossed  a  "t"  quite  in  the  same  manner  twice, 


APPENDICES  557 

and  yet  you  can  always  tell  her  way  of  crossing  it.  The 
absence  of  capitals  after  a  full  stop  is  a  minor  point  but 
a  considerable  one.  She  always  brought  the  lower  loop  of 
the  "b"  up  to  the  up  stroke,  so  that  it  looks  like  an  "f "; 
she  always  separated  her  "Ps"  from  the  succeeding  letter. 

Let  the  reader  compare  the  document  of  which  I  am 
speaking,  reproduced  in  facsimile  opposite  page  526, 
and  her  letter  of  the  3rd  of  September,  1791,  to  Joseph  II. 
(opposite  page  400),  and  he  will  see  what  I  mean.  The 
first  is  reproduced  on  a  four-fifths  scale,  the  second  in  fac- 
simile, but  the  points  I  make  can  easily  be  followed  upon 
them.  Note  the  first  "d"  in  the  first  line  of  the  letter  writ- 
ten in  prison,  the  second  "d"  and  the  third  "d"  all  in  the 
same  line.  Next  look  down  to  the  seventh  line  and  note 
the  "d"  in  "tendre,"  and  see  how  the  first  three  "d's" 
though  irregular  are  of  the  same  type,  and  how  the  fourth, 
though  much  less  hooked,  is  obviously  written  by  the 
same  hand.  Look  down  two  lines  lower  to  the  "d"  in 
"plaidoyer";  it  has  a  complete  hook  and  is  quite  different 
from  the  other  letters,  and  three  lines  lower,  in  the  word 
"deux,"  the  hook  has  a  sharp  angle  apparent  nowhere 
else  on  the  page.  Now  if  you  turn  to  the  "d's"  in  her  letter 
to  her  brother  of  the  3rd  of  September,  1791,  you  will 
find  exactly  the  same  characteristics.  Not  one  "d"  like 
another,  yet  all  obviously  from  the  same  hand;  the  "d" 
in  the  second  line  with  a  full  hook  to  it,  the  two  "d's"  in 
the  twelfth  line  much  vaguer. 

So  with  the  "t's,"  they  are  crossed  in  every  kind  of  way 
with  a  short  straight  line,  a  long  curved  one,  a  little  jab 
followed  by  a  straight,  now  with  a  slope  downward,  now 
with  a  slope  upward,  but  all  evidently  from  the  same  hand, 
and  their  very  variety  makes  it  impossible  for  them  to  be 


558  MARIE  ANTOINETTE 

a  forgery.  The  "1's"  written  separately  from  the  letter 
following  each,  are  obvious  everywhere,  so  is  that  irregular- 
ity of  line  of  which  I  have  spoken.  Let  the  reader  look  at 
the  third  line  of  the  letter  of  the  3rd  of  September,  1791 
(opposite  page  400),  and  at  the  seventh  line  of  the  letter 
written  in  prison,  and  ask  himself  whether  it  would  have 
been  possible  to  copy  such  native  irregularity. 

The  identity  of  handwriting  is  apparent  even  from 
these  two  documents.  It  is  absolutely  convincing  to  any 
one  who  has  seen  much  of  her  penmanship. 

(2)  To  the  faults  in  grammar  and  in  spelling  I  should 
pay  little  attention  —  those  things  are  easily  copied ;  but 
it  is  worth  remarking  that  on  the  third  line  of  the  letter 
written  in  prison  she  spells  the  infinitive  of  "montrer"  with- 
out the  final  "r"  as  though  it  were  a  participle,  while  in 
the  letter  written  to  her  brother  in  1791  she  makes  no  such 
error.     She  puts  an  "e"  in  "Jouis,"  and  so  forth.     All 
these  discrepancies  are  a  proof  of  the  authenticity  of  the 
letter.     She  spelt  at  random,   and  her  grammar  was  at 
random,  though  she  got  a  little  more  accurate  as  she  grew 
older.     It  would,  on  the  contrary,  be  an  argument  against 
the  authenticity  of  the  letter  if  particular  mistakes,  dis- 
covered in  a  particular  document  of  hers,  were  repeated 
in  this  last  letter  from  the  Conciergerie. 

(3)  The  letter  was  immediately  exposed  to  public  view; 
the  paper  was  grown  yellow,  the  writing  was  apparently  old, 
the  ink  in  places  faded,  the  creases  deep  and  worn.     Now 
all  these  accidental  features  could  no  doubt  be  reproduced 
by  a  modern  forger  with  the  advantage  of  modern  methods, 
modern  mechanical  appliances,  modern  chemical  science 
and  photography.     They  could   not  have  been   achieved 
by  a  forger  of  1816. 


APPENDICES  559 

It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  a  document  absolutely  unassail- 
able. The  arguments  against  it  are  of  the  same  sort  which 
modern  scepticism  perpetually  brings  against  every  form 
of  historical  evidence  that  does  not  fit  in  with  some  favour- 
ite modern  theory.  I  must  believe  the  evidence  of  my 
senses,  and  I  am  compelled  to  admit  that  a  woman,  every 
expression  of  whose  soul  was  different  from  this,  and  whose 
whole  demeanour  before  and  after  writing  the  letter  betrayed 
a  mental  condition  quite  inconsistent  with  the  writing  of  it, 
was  granted  for  perhaps  an  hour  (in  spite  of  a  full  day's 
fast,  the  fear  of  imminent  death  and  the  breakdown  of  her 
health  and  of  all  her  power),  an  exaltation  sufficient  to  pro- 
duce this  wonderful  piece  of  prose,  and  a  steadfast  control 
of  language  and  a  discovery  of  language  miraculously 
exceptional  to  her  character  and  experience. 

No  other  conclusion  is  possible  to  a  student  unless,  like 
any  Don,  he  prefers  a  sceptical  hypothesis  to  the  testimony 
of  his  eyes  and  the  judgment  of  his  common  sense. 


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